Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bertuzzo, Enrico, Frigerio, Michele
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.10101
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915904562921472
author Bertuzzo, Enrico
Frigerio, Michele
author_facet Bertuzzo, Enrico
Frigerio, Michele
contents Massive sterile neutrinos, also known as heavy neutral leptons, can have a mixing with active neutrinos, $θ$, as well as a dipole coupling to the photon, $d$. We study the interplay between these two portals, considering the production from meson decays of sterile neutrinos with mass $0.1$ GeV $\lesssim M_N \lesssim 10$ GeV, at beam-dump facilities such as NA62 and SHiP, and at the FASER2 experiment. These sterile neutrinos can be long-lived and decay into a photon in a distant detector, via the dipole operator. We find that all these experiments will be sensitive to values of $d$ which are presently unconstrained. The experimental reach varies strongly with the mass $M_N$ and the mixing $θ$, and one observes specific correlations with the flavour of active neutrinos. The SHiP experiment will mark a jump in sensitivity: (i) it will probe a sterile dipole as small as $d\sim 10^{-8}$ GeV$^{-1}$, thus testing new physics well above the electroweak scale; (ii) it may detect the active-sterile dipole to the level predicted by electroweak loops, if $θ$ is close to the present bound.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_10101
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Two portals to GeV sterile neutrinos : dipole versus mixing
Bertuzzo, Enrico
Frigerio, Michele
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Massive sterile neutrinos, also known as heavy neutral leptons, can have a mixing with active neutrinos, $θ$, as well as a dipole coupling to the photon, $d$. We study the interplay between these two portals, considering the production from meson decays of sterile neutrinos with mass $0.1$ GeV $\lesssim M_N \lesssim 10$ GeV, at beam-dump facilities such as NA62 and SHiP, and at the FASER2 experiment. These sterile neutrinos can be long-lived and decay into a photon in a distant detector, via the dipole operator. We find that all these experiments will be sensitive to values of $d$ which are presently unconstrained. The experimental reach varies strongly with the mass $M_N$ and the mixing $θ$, and one observes specific correlations with the flavour of active neutrinos. The SHiP experiment will mark a jump in sensitivity: (i) it will probe a sterile dipole as small as $d\sim 10^{-8}$ GeV$^{-1}$, thus testing new physics well above the electroweak scale; (ii) it may detect the active-sterile dipole to the level predicted by electroweak loops, if $θ$ is close to the present bound.
title Two portals to GeV sterile neutrinos : dipole versus mixing
topic High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.10101