Neutrinos with a linear seesaw mechanism in a scenario of gauged B-L symmetry

TL;DR

This paper proposes a linear seesaw mechanism within a gauged B-L symmetry extension of the standard model, predicting new heavy particles and analyzing their production and decay at the LHC.

Contribution

It introduces a novel linear seesaw scenario with distinctive scalar phenomenology and detailed collider signatures for heavy neutrinos, Z' bosons, and scalars.

Findings

Z' decays mainly into heavy neutrino or lepton pairs

Neutral scalars produced via Z' fusion, decaying into vector bosons or neutrinos

Charged scalars decay into leptons and missing energy

Abstract

We consider a mechanism for neutrino mass generation, based on a local B-L extension of the standard model, which becomes a linear seesaw regime for light neutrinos after spontaneous symmetry breaking. The spectrum of extra particles includes heavy neutrinos with masses near the TeV scale and a heavy Z' boson, as well as three extra neutral scalars and a charged scalar pair. We study the production and decays of these heavy particles at the LHC. Z' will decay mainly into heavy neutrino pairs or charged lepton pairs, similar to other low scale seesaw scenarios with local B-L, while the phenomenology of the extra scalars is what distinguishes the linear seesaw from the previous models. One of the neutral scalars is produced by Z' Z' fusion and decays mainly into vector boson pairs, the other two neutral scalars are less visible as they decay only into heavy or light neutrino pairs, and finally the charged scalars will decay mainly into charged leptons and missing energy.