Probing new charged scalars with neutrino trident production

TL;DR

This paper explores how neutrino trident production can be used to detect leptophilic charged scalars, showing potential sensitivity improvements and categorizing scalar models, with implications for new physics searches.

Contribution

It is the first to apply neutrino trident production to probe charged scalars and introduces mixed-flavour final states to enhance sensitivity to new physics.

Findings

Neutrino trident production can provide competitive bounds on charged scalars.

Mixed-flavour production increases sensitivity by 20-50%.

In certain UV models, trident production is less competitive due to neutrino mass constraints.

Abstract

We investigate the possibility of using neutrino trident production to probe leptophilic charged scalars at future high intensity neutrino experiments. We show that under specific assumptions, this production process can provide competitive sensitivity for generic charged scalars as compared to common existing bounds. We also investigate how the recently proposed mixed-flavour production - where the two oppositely charged leptons in the final state need not be muon flavoured - can give a 20-50% increase in sensitivity for certain configurations of new physics couplings as compared to traditional trident modes. We then categorize all renormalizable leptophilic scalar extensions based on their representation under $SU(2)\times U(1)$, and discuss the Higgs triplet and Zee-Babu models as explicit UV realizations. We find that the inclusion of additional doubly charged scalars and the need to reproduce neutrino masses make trident production uncompetitive with current bounds for these specific UV completions. Our work represents the first application of neutrino trident production to study charged scalars, and of mixed-flavour final states to study physics beyond the Standard Model.