Testing the seesaw mechanisms via displaced right-handed neutrinos from a light scalar at the HL-LHC

Abstract

We investigate the pair production of right-handed neutrinos from the decay of a light $B-L$ scalar in the $U(1{)}_{B-L}$ model. The $B-L$ scalar mixes to the SM Higgs, and the physical scalar is required to be lighter than the observed Higgs. The produced right-handed neutrinos are predicted to be long-lived according to the type-I seesaw mechanism, and yield potentially distinct signatures such as displaced vertex and time-delayed leptons at the CMS/ATLAS/LHCb, as well as signatures at the far detectors including the CODEX-b, FACET, FASER, MoEDAL-MAPP and MATHUSLA. We analyze the sensitivity reach at the HL-LHC for the right-handed neutrinos with masses of 2.5 $\sim$ 30 GeV, showing that the active-sterile mixing to muons can be probed to $V_{\mu N}\sim 10^{-5}$ at the CMS/ATLAS/LHCb using the displaced vertex searches, and one magnitude lower at the MATHUSLA/CMS using time-delayed leptons searches, reaching the parameter space interesting for type-I seesaw mechanisms.

Comments: 11 pages, 7 figures, to be published in PRD