Radiatively Induced Type II seesaw and Vector-like 5/3 Charge Quarks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a SUSY extension of the type II seesaw model where small neutrino masses are radiatively generated, featuring exotic vector-like quarks with charge 5/3, and explores their collider phenomenology and implications for neutrinoless double beta decay.

Contribution

The paper presents a natural mechanism for small neutrino masses in a SUSY type II seesaw model with exotic vector-like quarks, including detailed phenomenological analysis.

Findings

Exotic quarks with charge 5/3 can be detected at colliders with unique signatures.

A new short-distance contribution to neutrinoless double beta decay is identified.

The model's signatures can differ significantly from minimal models depending on coupling hierarchies.

Abstract

Understanding small neutrino masses in type II seesaw models with TeV scale SM triplet Higgs bosons requires that its coupling with the standard model Higgs doublet H be dialed down to be order eV to KeV, which is a fine-tuning by a factor of $10^{-11}-10^{-8}$ with respect to the weak scale. We present a SUSY extension of the type II seesaw model where this dimensionful small coupling is radiatively induced, thus making its smallness natural. This model has an exotic vector-like quark doublet which contains a quark X with electric charge 5/3 and a top partner t'. We discuss in details the phenomenology of the model paying special attention to the consequences of the interactions of the the exotic heavy quarks and the scalars of the model. Implications for neutrinoless double beta decay and for the LHC experiments are discussed in detail. Remarkably, in this model both the seesaw triplet and the heavy quarks can manifest at colliders in a host of different signatures, including some that significantly differ from those of the minimal models. Depending on the choice of the hierarchy of couplings, the decay of the heavy quarks and of the seesaw triplet may be subject to bounds that can be tighter or looser than the bounds from standard LHC searches. Furthermore we point out a new short-distance contribution to neutrinoless double beta decay mediated by the simultaneous propagation of the type II triplet and exotic fermions. Remarkably this contribution to the neutrinoless double beta decay is parametrically quite independent from the scale of the generated neutrino mass.