Impact of nuclear gluon distributions on neutrino-induced leptoquark production

TL;DR

This paper investigates how nuclear gluon distributions influence neutrino-induced leptoquark production, revealing that nuclear effects can lower the energy threshold for such processes in cosmic neutrino interactions.

Contribution

It introduces the impact of nuclear gluon densities on leptoquark production cross sections, highlighting the significance for ultra-high energy neutrino interactions.

Findings

Nuclear gluon distributions lower the leptoquark production threshold.

Impact is significant for oxygen nuclei in neutrino telescopes.

Cross sections are sensitive to nuclear parton distribution functions.

Abstract

We analyze neutrino-induced leptoquark production on atomic nuclei. A leptoquark term in the Lagrangian admits the possibility that neutrinos interact with gluons. The current lower limits on the leptoquark masses are of the order of 1 TeV depending on the leptoquark quantum numbers and couplings. Such heavy states can be produced in ultra-high energy cosmic neutrino scattering processes. The four-momentum transfer squared and the Bjorken variable simultaneously probed in these processes may reach values kinematically inaccessible at present collider experiments. We study the impact of the gluon density in a nucleus on the cross section for the leptoquark production. We show that taking into account the nuclear parton distributions shifts the production threshold to significantly lower neutrino energies. As a particular case we consider the interaction with oxygen, which is abundant in water/ice neutrino telescopes.