2008/05/31 by P. Perez, Pavel Fileviez Perez, Tao Han +4 · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Neutrino Physics Research #Particle Detector Development and Performance #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #hep-ex #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.78.015018
published as Phys.Rev.D78:015018,2008 · 50 pages, 51 figures, minor corrections, one reference added, to appear in Physical Review D
arxiv created 2008/06/27 · openalex publication_date 2008/07/25 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We demonstrate how to systematically test a well-motivated mechanism for neutrino mass generation (type II seesaw) at the LHC, in which a Higgs triplet is introduced. In the optimistic scenarios with a small Higgs triplet vacuum expectation value v_\ensuremathΔ<10^\ensuremath-4 GeV, one can look for clean signals of lepton-number violation in the decays of doubly charged (H^\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi) and singly charged (H^\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi) Higgs bosons to distinguish the normal hierarchy (NH), the inverted hierarchy (IH), and the quasidegenerate (QD) spectrum for the light neutrino masses. The observation of either H+\ensuremath→\ensuremathτ+\ensuremathν or H+\ensuremath→e+\ensuremathν will be particularly robust for the spectrum test since they are independent of the unknown Majorana phases. The H++ decays moderately depend on a Majorana phase \ensuremathΦ2 in the NH, but sensitively depend on \ensuremathΦ1 in the IH. In a less favorable scenario v_\ensuremathΔ>2\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi10^\ensuremath-4 GeV, when the leptonic channels are suppressed, one needs to observe the decays H+\ensuremath→W+H1 and H+\ensuremath→tb to confirm the triplet-doublet mixing which in turn implies the existence of the same gauge-invariant interaction between the lepton doublet and the Higgs triplet responsible for the neutrino mass generation. In the most optimistic situation, v_\ensuremathΔ\ensuremath∼10^\ensuremath-4 GeV, both channels of the lepton pairs and gauge boson pairs may be available simultaneously. The determination of their relative branching fractions would give a measurement for the value of v_\ensuremathΔ.