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Cottin, G., Helo, J. C., & Hirsch, M. (2018). Displaced vertices as probes of sterile neutrino mixing at the LHC. Phys. Rev. D, 98(3), 035012–6pp.
Abstract: We investigate the reach at the LHC to probe light sterile neutrinos with displaced vertices. We focus on sterile neutrinos N with masses m(N) similar to (5-30) GeV that are produced in rare decays of the standard model gauge bosons and decay inside the inner trackers of the LHC detectors. With a strategy that triggers on the prompt lepton accompanying the N displaced vertex and considers charged tracks associated with it, we show that the 13 TeV LHC with 3000/fb is able to probe active-sterile neutrino mixings down to vertical bar V-lN vertical bar(2) approximate to 10(-9), with l = e, mu, which is an improvement of up to 4 orders of magnitude when comparing with current experimental limits from trileptons and proposed lepton-jets searches. In the case when tau mixing is present, mixing angles as low as vertical bar V-tau N vertical bar(2) approximate to 10(-8) can be accessed.
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Cottin, G., Helo, J. C., Hirsch, M., Pena, C., Wang, C. S. A., & Xie, S. (2023). Long-lived heavy neutral leptons with a displaced shower signature at CMS. J. High Energy Phys., 02(2), 011–16pp.
Abstract: We study the LHC discovery potential in the search for heavy neutral leptons (HNL) with a new signature: a displaced shower in the CMS muon detector, giving rise to a large cluster of hits forming a displaced shower. A new Delphes module is used to model the CMS detector response for such displaced decays. We reinterpret a dedicated CMS search for neutral long-lived particles decaying in the CMS muon endcap detectors for the minimal HNL scenario. We demonstrate that this new strategy is particularly sensitive to active-sterile mixings with tau leptons, due to hadronic tau decays. HNL masses between similar to 1-6 GeV can be accessed for mixings as low as vertical bar V-tau N vertical bar(2) similar to 10(-7), probing unique regions of parameter space in the tau sector.
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Cottin, G., Helo, J. C., Hirsch, M., & Silva, D. (2019). Revisiting the LHC reach in the displaced region of the minimal left-right symmetric model. Phys. Rev. D, 99(11), 115013–4pp.
Abstract: We revisit discovery prospects for a long-lived sterile neutrino N at the LHC in the context of left-right symmetric theories. We focus on a displaced vertex search strategy sensitive to O(GeV) neutrino masses produced via a right-handed W-R boson. Both on-shell and off-shell Drell-Yan production of W-R are considered. We estimate the reach as a function of m(N) and m(WR). With root s = 13 TeV and 300/fb of integrated luminosity, the LHC can probe neutrino masses as high as approximately 30 GeV and m(wR) around 6 TeV. The reach goes up to 11.5 TeV with 3000/tb and m(N) similar to 45 GeV. This represents an improvement of a factor of 2 in sensitivity with respect to earlier work.
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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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Dib, C., Helo, J. C., Hirsch, M., Kovalenko, S., & Schmidt, I. (2012). Heavy sterile neutrinos in tau decays and the MiniBooNE anomaly. Phys. Rev. D, 85(1), 011301–4pp.
Abstract: Current results of the MiniBooNE experiment show excess events that indicate neutrino oscillations, but only if one goes beyond the standard 3 family scenario. Recently a different explanation of the events has been given, not in terms of oscillations but by the production and decay of a massive sterile neutrino with large transition magnetic moment. We study the effect of such a sterile neutrino in the rare decays tau(-) -> mu(-)mu(+)pi(-)nu and tau(-) -> mu(-)mu(+)e(-)nu nu. We find that searches for these decays, featuring displaced vertices between the mu(-) and the other charged particles, constitute reliable tests for the existence of the sterile neutrino proposed to explain the MiniBooNE anomaly. These searches could be done with already existing experimental data.
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