Heavy neutrino signals at large hadron colliders
Abstract
We study the LHC discovery potential for heavy Majorana neutrino singlets in the process pp -> W^+ -> mu+ N -> mu+ mu+ jj, plus its charge conjugate. With a fast detector simulation we show that, in contrast with previous claims, backgrounds involving two same-sign muons are not negligible and, moreover, they cannot be eliminated with simple sequential kinematical cuts. Using a likelihood analysis it is shown that, for heavy neutrinos coupling only to the muon, LHC has 5 sigma sensitivity for heavy neutrino masses up to 175 GeV. This reduction in sensitivity, compared to previous parton-level estimates, is driven by the ~10^2-10^3 times larger background. Approximate limits are also provided for other lepton number-violating final states, as well as for Tevatron. As a by-product of our analysis, heavy neutrino production has been implemented within the ALPGEN framework.Keywords
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