Neutrinoless double-beta decay with massive scalar emission

Abstract

Searches for neutrino-less double-beta decay ($0\nu2β$) place an important constraint on models where light fields beyond the Standard Model participate in the neutrino mass mechanism. While $0\nu2β$ experimental collaborations often consider various massless majoron models, including various forms of majoron couplings and multi-majoron final-state processes, none of these searches considered the scenario where the "majoron" $ϕ$ is not massless, $m_ϕ\sim$~MeV, of the same order as the $Q$-value of the $0\nu2β$ reaction. We consider this parameter region and estimate $0\nu2βϕ$ constraints for $m_ϕ$ of order MeV. The constraints are affected not only by kinematical phase space suppression but also by a change in the signal to background ratio characterizing the search. As a result, $0\nu2βϕ$ constraints for $m_ϕ>0$ diminish significantly below the reaction threshold. This has phenomenological implications, which we illustrate focusing on high-energy neutrino telescopes. Our results motivate a dedicated analysis by $0\nu2β$ collaborations, analogous to the dedicated analyses targeting massless majoron models.