New avenues for the neutrino dipole portal exploration at the energy frontier

Abstract

We present a comprehensive and gauge-invariant study of the neutrino dipole portal at the energy frontier. Assuming negligible active-sterile mixing, we analyze sterile neutrino production via dimension-6 dipole operators coupling to the electroweak field strengths. The analysis incorporates both single- and double-gauge-boson effective interactions. We investigate novel collider signatures at the HL-LHC, the FCC-hh -- studied here in this context for the first time -- and a 10 TeV muon collider. Particular emphasis is placed on electroweak boson-initiated processes, which dominate in the high-mass regime above $\sim$1 TeV. At the muon collider, these VBF-like topologies enable production even when the dipole couples to non-muonic flavors, offering a unique and sensitive probe for different flavor scenarios. We derive sensitivity projections for various theoretical benchmarks, reaching dipole couplings down to $d_{\gamma }\sim 6\times 10^{-7}$ GeV${}^{-1}$ at FCC-hh and $d_{\gamma }\sim 2\times 10^{-7}$ GeV${}^{-1}$ at the muon collider.

Comments: v2: minor improvements. Some clarifications on previous literature and references added