Testing a Neutrino Mass Generation Mechanism at the Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

The Large Hadron Collider could be a discovery machine for the neutrino mass pattern and its Majorana nature in the context of a well-motivated TeV scale Type II seesaw model. This is achieved by identifying the flavor structure of the lepton number violating decays of the charged Higgs bosons. The observation of either H^+ --> tau^+ nubar or H^+ --> e^+ nubar will be particularly robust to determine the neutrino spectra since they are independent of the unknown Majorana phases, which could be probed via the H^{++} --> e^+_i e^+_j decays. In a less favorable scenario when the leptonic channels are suppressed, one needs to observe the decays H^+ --> W^+ H_1, and H^+ --> t bbar to confirm the triplet-doublet mixing that implies the Type II relation. The associated production H^{++} H^{-} is crucial in order to test the triplet nature of the Higgs field.

Comments: 5 pages, 4 figures, published in PRD Rapid Communication