arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to F. del Aguila.
Any new neutrino physics at the TeV scale must include a suppression mechanism to keep its contribution to light neutrino masses small enough. We review some seesaw model examples with weakly broken lepton number, and comment on the expected effects at large colliders and in neutrino oscillations.
A new leptophobic neutral gauge boson Z' with small mixing to the Z can have a mass as light as M_Z' ~ 350 GeV, and still have escaped detection at LEP and Tevatron. Such a Z' boson can be derived from E6 and, if the new heavy neutrino singlets in the 27 representation are lighter than M_Z'/2, the process p p(pbar) -> Z' -> NN -> l+- l+- X is observable. Indeed, this new signal could explain the small excess of like-sign dileptons found at Tevatron. Implications for LHC are also discussed. In particular, the Tevatron excess could be confirmed with less than 1 fb-1, and leptophobic Z' masses up to 2.5 TeV can be probed with 30 fb-1.
We study the LHC discovery potential for heavy Majorana neutrino singlets in the process pp -> W+ -> l+ N -> l+ l+ jj (l=e,mu) plus its charge conjugate. With a fast detector simulation we show that backgrounds involving two like-sign charged leptons are not negligible and, moreover, they cannot be eliminated with simple sequential kinematical cuts. Using a likelihood analysis it is shown that, for heavy neutrinos coupling only to the muon, LHC has 5 sigma sensitivity for masses up to 200 GeV in the final state mu+- mu+- jj. This reduction in sensitivity, compared to previous parton-level estimates, is driven by the ~ 10^2-10^3 times larger background. Limits are also provided for e+- e+- jj and e+- mu+- jj final states, as well as for Tevatron. For heavy Dirac neutrinos the prospects are worse because backgrounds involving two opposite charge leptons are much larger. For this case, we study the observability of the lepton flavour violating signal e+- mu-+ jj. As a by-product of our analysis, heavy neutrino production has been implemented within the ALPGEN framework.
Dirac and Majorana neutrinos can be distinguished in relativistic neutrino oscillations if new right-handed interactions exist, due to their different propagation in matter. We review how these new interactions affect neutrino oscillation experiments and discuss the size of this eventually observable effect for different oscillation channels, baselines and neutrino energies.
Large colliders are not sensitive to light neutrino masses and character, but they can produce new heavy neutrinos, allowing also for the determination of their Dirac or Majorana nature. We review the discovery limits at the next generation of large colliders.
The large cross sections for gauge boson production at the Fermilab Tevatron and the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) might give a chance to determine the electroweak parameters with high precision. We calculated two different forward-backward charge asymmetries (A^CS_FB and A^j_FB) of lepton pairs in events with a large transverse momentum jet p p (pbar) -> Z, gamma* + j -> e- e+ j at next-to-leading order (NLO), O(alpha_s) corrections, making use of the Monte Carlo programs MCFM and ALPGEN. These observables could provide a new determination of the weak mixing angle sin^2 theta^lept_eff (M_Z^2) with a statistical precision for each lepton flavour of 10^{-3} (7 x 10^{-3}) at LHC (Tevatron). If b jets are identified, a new asymmetry with respect to the b quark (A^b_FB) can also be measured with a statistical precision of 2 x 10^{-3} (4 x 10^{-2}) at LHC (Tevatron). Finally, we comment on the dependence of our results on various sources of uncertainties and compare, in the case of A^b_FB, the exact result with an approximation that might be more suitable when performing a realistic experimental analysis.
We consider the next-to-leading order corrections, O(alpha_s), to forward-backward charge asymmetries for lepton-pair production in association with a large transverse momentum jet at large hadron colliders. We find that the leading order results are essentially confirmed. Although experimentally challenging and in practice with large backgrounds, these observables could provide a new determination of the weak mixing angle sin2 theta^lept_eff (M_Z^2) with a statistical precision for each lepton flavour of ~10^(-3) (7 x 10^{-3}) at LHC (Tevatron), and if b jets are identified, of the b quark Z asymmetry A^b_{FB} with a statistical precision of ~ 2x10^{-3} (4x10{-2}) at LHC (Tevatron).
Little Higgs models are formulated as effective theories with a cut-off of up to 100 times the electroweak scale. Neutrino masses are then a puzzle, since the usual see-saw mechanism involves a much higher scale that would introduce quadratic corrections to the Higgs mass parameter. We propose a model that can naturally accommodate the observed neutrino masses and mixings in Little Higgs scenarios. Our framework does not involve any large scale or suppressed Yukawa couplings, and it implies the presence of three extra (Dirac) neutrinos at the TeV scale. The masses of the light neutrinos are induced radiatively, they are proportional to small (\approx keV) mass parameters that break lepton number and are suppressed by the Little Higgs cut-off.
We discuss single heavy neutrino production e+ e- -> N nu -> l W nu, l = e, mu, tau, at a future high energy collider like CLIC, with a centre of mass energy of 3 TeV. This process could allow to detect heavy neutrinos with masses of 1-2 TeV if their coupling to the electron V_eN is in the range 0.004-0.01. We study the dependence of the limits on the heavy neutrino mass and emphasise the crucial role of lepton flavour in the discovery of a positive signal at CLIC energy. We present strategies to determine heavy neutrino properties once they are discovered, namely their Dirac or Majorana character and the size and chirality of their charged current couplings. Conversely, if no signal is found, the bound V_eN < 0.002-0.006 would be set for masses of 1-2 TeV, improving the present limit up to a factor of 30. We also extend previous work examining in detail the flavour and mass dependence of the corresponding limits at ILC, as well as the determination of heavy neutrino properties if they are discovered at this collider.
We analyse l W nu production at ILC, paying special attention to the role of the final lepton flavour and beam polarisation in the search for a new heavy neutrino N. We show that a sizeable coupling to the electron V_eN ~ 10^-2 is necessary to have an observable signal in any of the channels, despite the fact that the signal may be more visible in muon or tau final states. The non-observation of a heavy neutrino at ILC will improve the present upper bound on its mixing with the electron by more than one order of magnitude, V_eN < 0.007 for m_N between 200 and 400 GeV.
A numerical approach to compute tensor integrals in one-loop calculations is presented. The algorithm is based on a recursion relation which allows to express high rank tensor integrals as a function of lower rank ones. At each level of iteration only inverse square roots of Gram determinants appear. For the phase-space regions where Gram determinants are so small that numerical problems are expected, we give general prescriptions on how to construct reliable approximations to the exact result without performing Taylor expansions. Working in 4+epsilon dimensions does not require an analytic separation of ultraviolet and infrared/collinear divergences, and, apart from trivial integrals that we compute explicitly, no additional ones besides the standard set of scalar one-loop integrals are needed.
New large colliders will probe scales up to few TeV, indicating the way Nature has chosen to extend the Standard Model. We review alternative scenarios to the traditional Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model: the little Higgs model, split supersymmetry and extra dimensional models with low energy signals.
We review some recent developments in top quark production and decay at current and future colliders.
We analyse the effect of general brane kinetic terms for bulk scalars, fermions and gauge bosons in theories with extra dimensions, with and without supersymmetry. We find in particular a singular behaviour when these terms contain derivatives orthogonal to the brane. This is brought about by $δ(0)$ divergences arising at second and higher order in perturbation theory. We argue that this behaviour can be smoothed down by classical renormalization.
Models with extra dimensions may give new effects visible at future experiments. In these models, bulk fields can develop localized corrections to their kinetic terms which can modify the phenomenological predictions in a sizeable way. We review the case in which both gauge bosons and fermions propagate in the bulk, and discuss the limits on the parameter space arising from electroweak precision data.
In theories with branes, bulk fields get in general divergent corrections localized on these defects. Hence, the corresponding brane terms are renormalized and should be included in the effective theory from the very beginning. We review the phenomenology associated to brane kinetic terms for different spins and backgrounds, and point out that renormalization is required already at the classical level.
In theories with extra dimensions there are generically brane kinetic terms for fields living in the bulk. These modify the masses and wave functions of the Kaluza-Klein expansions, and then the effective four dimensional gauge and Yukawa couplings of the corresponding modes. Here, we discuss some phenomenological consequences of fermion brane kinetic terms, emphasizing their implications for models with low compactification scales, whose agreement with experiment can be improved, and observable effects at collider energies, like the production of new fermions.
We review the low energy limits on Kaluza-Klein excitations in orbifold models. New vector-like quarks, as well as new Z' gauge bosons, can be accommodated with masses observable at large colliders.