Revisiting the LHC reach in the displaced region of the minimal left-right symmetric model

Abstract

We revisit discovery prospects for a long-lived sterile neutrino $N$ at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the context of left-right symmetric theories. We focus on a displaced vertex search strategy sensitive to $\mathcal{O}$(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 $m_{W_R}$. With $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV and 300/fb of integrated luminosity, the LHC can probe neutrino masses as high as $\sim 30$ GeV and $m_{W_R}$ around 6 TeV. The reach goes up to 11.5 TeV with 3000/fb and $m_N\sim 45$ GeV. This represents an improvement of a factor of 2 in sensitivity with respect to earlier work.

Comments: 6 pages, 1 figure. In v2: Numerical typo fixed, few clarifications on the simulation and references added. Version accepted for publication in PRD