New Avenues to Heavy Right-handed Neutrinos with Pair Production at Hadronic Colliders

Abstract

In many models incorporating the type-I seesaw mechanism, the right-handed neutrino ($N$) couples to heavy vector/scalar bosons and thereby has resonant pair production. It barely receives attention thus far, however, it may provide the best avenue to probe TeV scale $N$ without requiring anomalously large mixing between $N$ and the active neutrino $ν_L$. In this paper we explore the discovery prospects of (mainly heavy) $N$ pair production at the 14 TeV LHC and future 100 TeV $pp$ collider, based on the three signatures: 1) trilepton from $ N(\rightarrow \ell W_\ell)N(\rightarrow \ell W_h)$ with $W_{\ell/h}$ the leptonically/hadronically decaying $W$; 2) boosted di-Higgs boson plus MET from $N(\rightarrow ν_L h)N(\rightarrow ν_L h)$; 3) a single boosted Higgs with leptons and MET from $N(\rightarrow \ell W_\ell)N(\rightarrow ν_L h)$. At the 100 TeV collider, we also consider the situation when the Higgs boson is over boosted thus losing its jet substructure. Interpreting our tentative results in the benchmark model, the local $B-L$ model, we find that the (multi-) TeV scale $N$ can be probed at the (100) 14 TeV colliders.