Global Constraints on a Heavy Neutrino

Abstract

We estimate constraints on the existence of a heavy, mostly sterile neutrino with mass between 10 eV and 1 TeV. We improve upon previous analyses by performing a global combination and expanding the experimental inputs to simultaneously include tests for lepton universality, lepton-flavor-violating processes, electroweak precision data, dipole moments, and neutrinoless double beta decay. Assuming the heavy neutrino and its decay products are invisible to detection, we further include, in a self-consistent manner, constraints from direct kinematic searches, the kinematics of muon decay, cosmology, and neutrino oscillations, in order to estimate constraints on the values of $|U_{e4}{|}^2$, $|U_{\mu 4}{|}^2$, and $|U_{\tau 4}{|}^2$.

Comments: 19 pages, 13 figures, 3 tables. Typographical errors corrected, results and conclusions unchanged