Neglected heavy leptons at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential for detecting neglected heavy leptons at the LHC, analyzing their decay patterns and current experimental limits, and highlighting the impact of observed excesses on mass constraints.

Contribution

It provides new limits on heavy lepton masses based on existing multi-lepton searches, considering typical decay modes and the influence of observed excesses.

Findings

New mass limits for heavy leptons are established.

Observed excesses hinder setting stronger constraints.

Heavy leptons with specific decay patterns remain unconstrained by current searches.

Abstract

New heavy leptons with standard model gauge couplings have well determined cross sections for pair production. A standard pattern of mass mixing implies that the most likely decays are $\tau^\prime\to W \nu'$ and $ \nu'\to W \tau$. Interestingly there have been no direct searches for heavy leptons with these decays at the LHC. However comparison with several multi-lepton searches allow us to set new limits on the heavy lepton masses. Three observed excesses in the signal regions prevent us from setting stronger limits.