Understanding neutrino properties from decoupling right-handed neutrinos and extra Higgs doublets

TL;DR

This paper explores how extending the Standard Model with heavy right-handed neutrinos and Higgs doublets can explain small neutrino masses and observed mass hierarchies, with potential experimental signatures.

Contribution

It demonstrates, via renormalization group analysis, that heavy extra particles can account for neutrino properties and mass hierarchies while remaining consistent with low energy phenomena.

Findings

Heavy right-handed neutrinos influence low energy neutrino phenomenology.

The model can reproduce observed neutrino oscillation parameters.

Possible experimental signatures of the extended model are discussed.

Abstract

Low energy effects induced by heavy extra degrees of freedom are suppressed by powers of the large mass scale, thus preserving, if sufficiently heavy, the successes of the Standard Model in describing low energy phenomena. However, as is well known, heavy right-handed neutrinos may play an important role in low energy phenomenology as an explanation of the smallness of neutrino masses. We consider in this paper an extension of the Standard Model by heavy right-handed neutrinos and heavy Higgs doublets and we show, using a renormalization group approach, that this model can simultaneously provide an explanation for the small neutrino masses and for the mild hierarchy observed between the atmospheric and the solar mass splittings, even when the extra degrees of freedom are very heavy. We analyze the necessary conditions to reproduce the oscillation parameters and we discuss possible experimental signatures of this model.