Search for light-to-heavy quark flavor changing neutral currents in $\nu _{\mu}N$ and $\bar{\nu}_{\mu}N$ scattering at the Tevatron

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for flavor-changing neutral currents involving heavy quarks in neutrino-nucleon scattering at the Tevatron, setting new limits on quark flavor mixing strengths.

Contribution

It introduces a novel search for FCNC in heavy quark production via neutrino scattering at the Tevatron, providing the first limits on certain quark mixing parameters.

Findings

No evidence of FCNC was observed.

Limits on effective mixing strengths |V_{uc}|^2, |V_{db}|^2, |V_{sb}|^2 were established.

Results are consistent with the Standard Model expectations.

Abstract

We report on a search for flavor-changing neutral-currents (FCNC) in the production of heavy quarks in deep inelastic $\nu_{\mu}N$ and $\bar{\nu}% _{\mu}N$ scattering by the NuTeV experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron. This measurement, made possible by the high-purity NuTeV sign-selected beams, probes for FCNC in heavy flavors at the quark level and is uniquely sensitive to neutrino couplings of potential FCNC mediators. All searches are consistent with zero, and limits on the effective mixing strengths $% | V_{uc}| ^{2}$, $| V_{db}| ^{2}$, and $| V_{sb}| ^{2}$ are obtained.