2018/06/30 by Giovanna Cottin, Juan Carlos Helo, Martin Hirsch
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-ex #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.98.035012
published as Phys. Rev. D 98, 035012 (2018) · 12 pages, 4 figures. v2 includes added references and new Table 1. Version accepted for publication in PRD
arxiv created 2018/08/03 · arxiv updated 2018/08/15
We investigate the reach at the LHC to probe light sterile neutrinos with displaced vertices. We focus on sterile neutrinos N with masses mN ∼ (5-30) GeV, that are produced in rare decays of the Standard Model gauge bosons and decay inside the inner trackers of the LHC detectors. With a strategy that triggers on the prompt lepton accompanying the N displaced vertex and considers charged tracks associated to it, we show that the 13 TeV LHC with 3000/fb is able to probe active-sterile neutrino mixings down to |VlN|2≈ 10-9, with l=e,μ, which is an improvement of up to four orders of magnitude when comparing with current experimental limits from trileptons and proposed lepton-jets searches. In the case when τ mixing is present, mixing angles as low as |VτN|2 ≈ 10-8 can be accessed.