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Helo, J. C., Kovalenko, S. G., & Hirsch, M. (2014). Heavy neutrino searches at the LHC with displaced vertices. Phys. Rev. D, 89(7), 073005–7pp.
Abstract: Sterile neutrinos with masses in the range of 1-100 GeV have been searched for in a variety of experiments. Here, we discuss the prospects of searching for sterile neutrinos at the LHC using displaced vertices. Two different cases are discussed: (i) the standard model extended with sterile neutrinos, and (ii) right-handed neutrinos in a left-right symmetric extension of the standard model. A dedicated displaced vertex search will allow us to probe parts of the parameter space not accessible to other searches, but both cases will require a large luminosity.
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Cottin, G., Helo, J. C., Hirsch, M., Titov, A., & Wang, Z. S. (2021). Heavy neutral leptons in effective field theory and the high-luminosity LHC. J. High Energy Phys., 09(9), 039–34pp.
Abstract: Heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) with masses around the electroweak scale are expected to be rather long-lived particles, as a result of the observed smallness of the active neutrino masses. In this work, we study long-lived HNLs in NRSMEFT, a Standard Model (SM) extension with singlet fermions to which we add non-renormalizable operators up to dimension-6. Operators which contain two HNLs can lead to a sizable enhancement of the production cross sections, compared to the minimal case where HNLs are produced only via their mixing with the SM neutrinos. We calculate the expected sensitivities for the ATLAS detector and the future far-detector experiments: AL3X, ANUBIS, CODEX-b, FASER, MATHUSLA, and MoEDAL-MAPP in this setup. The sensitive ranges of the HNL mass and of the active-heavy mixing angle are much larger than those in the minimal case. We study both, Dirac and Majorana, HNLs and discuss how the two cases actually differ phenomenologically, for HNL masses above roughly 100 GeV.
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Beltran, R., Günther, J., Hirsch, M., Titov, A., & Wang, Z. S. (2024). Heavy neutral leptons from kaons in effective field theory. Phys. Rev. D, 109(11), 115014–19pp.
Abstract: In the framework of the low -energy effective theory containing, in addition to the Standard -Model fields, heavy neutral leptons (HNLs), we compute the decay rates of neutral and charged kaons into HNLs. We consider both lepton -number -conserving and lepton -number -violating four-fermion operators, taking into account also the contribution of active -heavy neutrino mixing. Assuming that the produced HNLs are longlived, we perform simulations and calculate the sensitivities of future long -lived -particle (LLP) detectors at the high -luminosity LHC as well as the near detector of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE -ND) to the considered scenario. When applicable, we also recast the existing bounds on the minimal mixing case obtained by NA62, T2K, and PS191. Our findings show that, while the future LHC LLP detectors can probe currently allowed parameter space only in certain benchmark scenarios, DUNE -ND should be sensitive to parameter space beyond the current bounds in almost all the benchmark scenarios, and, for some of the effective operators considered, it can even probe new -physics scales in excess of 3000 TeV.
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Hirsch, M., & Wang, Z. S. (2020). Heavy neutral leptons at ANUBIS. Phys. Rev. D, 101(5), 055034–9pp.
Abstract: Recently Bauer et al. [arXiv:1909.13022] proposed ANUBIS, an auxiliary detector to be installed in one of the shafts above the ATLAS or CMS interaction point, as a tool to search for long-lived particles. Here, we study the sensitivity of this proposal for long-lived heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) in both minimal and extended scenarios. We start with the minimal HNL model where both production and decay of the HNLs are mediated by active-sterile neutrino mixing, before studying the case of right-handed neutrinos in a leftright symmetric model. We then consider a U(1)(B-L) extension of the Standard Model (SM). In this model HNLs are produced from the decays of the mostly SM-like Higgs boson, via mixing in the scalar sector of the theory. In all cases, we fmd that ANUBIS has sensitivity reach comparable to the proposed MATHUSLA detector. For the minimal HNL scenario, the contributions from W's decaying to HNLs are more important at ANUBIS than at MATHUSLA, extending the sensitivity to slightly larger HNL masses at ANUBIS.
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Helo, J. C., Hirsch, M., & Wang, Z. S. (2018). Heavy neutral fermions at the high-luminosity LHC. J. High Energy Phys., 07(7), 056–23pp.
Abstract: Long-lived light particles (LLLPs) appear in many extensions of the standard model. LLLPs are usually motivated by the observed small neutrino masses, by dark matter or both. Typical examples for fermionic LLLPs (a.k.a. heavy neutral fermions, HNFs) are sterile neutrinos or the lightest neutralino in R-parity violating supersymmetry. The high luminosity LHC is expected to deliver up to 3/ab of data. Searches for LLLPs in dedicated experiments at the LHC could then probe the parameter space of LLLP models with unprecedented sensitivity. Here, we compare the prospects of several recent experimental proposals, FASER, CODEX-b and MATHUSLA, to search for HNFs and discuss their relative merits.s
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