Heavy Neutrinos and Lepton Number Violation in lp Colliders

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of lepton-proton colliders to detect Majorana neutrinos via lepton number violation, highlighting feasible signals and methods to distinguish them from background noise.

Contribution

It analyzes the prospects of observing lepton number violating processes at lepton-proton colliders, including electron-proton and muon-proton collisions, for identifying Majorana neutrinos.

Findings

Detectable signals are possible given current constraints on neutrino mixing.

Proposed cuts can enhance the signal-to-background ratio.

Neutrino mass can be reconstructed from final state kinematics.

Abstract

We discuss the prospects of studying lepton number violating processes in order to identify Majorana neutrinos from low scale seesaw mechanisms at lepton-proton colliders. In particular, we consider the scenarios of colliding electrons with LHC energy protons and, motivated by the efforts towards the construction of a muon collider, the prospects of muon-proton collisions. We find that present constraints on the mixing of the Majorana neutrinos still allow for a detectable signal at these kind of facilities given the smallness of the Standard Model background. We discuss possible cuts in order to further increase the signal over background ratio and the prospects of reconstructing the neutrino mass from the kinematics of the final state particles.