Higgs phenomenology as a probe of sterile neutrinos

Abstract

Physics beyond the Standard Model can manifest itself as both new light states and heavy degrees of freedom. In this paper, we assume that the former comprise only a sterile neutrino, $N$. Therefore, the most agnostic description of the new physics is given by an effective field theory built upon the Standard Model fields as well as $N$. We show that Higgs phenomenology provides a sensitive and potentially crucial tool to constrain effective gauge interactions of sterile neutrinos, not yet probed by current experiments. In parallel, this motivates a range of new Higgs decay channels with clean signatures as candidates for the next LHC runs, including $h\to \gamma +p_T^{\text{miss}}$ and $h\to \gamma \gamma +p_T^{\text{miss}}$.

Comments: 11 pages, 5 figures, 1 table; several comments and references added; typos corrected; matches version published in PRD