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Title: Sterile neutrinos and neutrinoless double beta decay in effective field theory

Abstract

We investigate neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) in the presence of sterile neutrinos with Majorana mass terms. These gauge-singlet fields are allowed to interact with Standard-Model (SM) fields via renormalizable Yukawa couplings as well as higher-dimensional gauge-invariant operators up to dimension seven in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory extended with sterile neutrinos. At the GeV scale, we use Chiral effective field theory involving sterile neutrinos to connect the operators at the level of quarks and gluons to hadronic interactions involving pions and nucleons. This allows us to derive an expression for 0νββ rates for various isotopes in terms of phase-space factors, hadronic low-energy constants, nuclear matrix elements, the neutrino masses, and the Wilson coefficients of higher-dimensional operators. The required hadronic low-energy constants and nuclear matrix elements depend on the neutrino masses, for which we obtain interpolation formulae grounded in QCD and chiral perturbation theory that improve existing formulae that are only valid in a small regime of neutrino masses. The resulting framework can be used directly to assess the impact of 0νββ experiments on scenarios with light sterile neutrinos and should prove useful in global analyses of sterile-neutrino searches. We per- form several phenomenological studies of 0νββ in the presence of sterile neutrinos with and without higher-dimensional operators. We find that non-standard interactions involving sterile neutrinos have a dramatic impact on 0νββ phenomenology, and next-generation experiments can probe such interactions up to scales of $$\mathcal O$$ (100) TeV.

Authors:
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3]; ORCiD logo [4];  [5]
  1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  2. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA (United States). Dept. of Physics
  3. Univ. of San Diego, San Diego, CA (United States)
  4. Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA (United States). Dept. of Physics; Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States). RIKEN Research Center
  5. Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA (United States). Dept. of Physics
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP)
OSTI Identifier:
1648097
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-20-21376
Journal ID: ISSN 1029-8479; TRN: US2203011
Grant/Contract Number:  
89233218CNA000001; SC0009919; AC52- 06NA25396
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: Journal of High Energy Physics (Online); Journal Volume: 2020; Journal Issue: 6; Journal ID: ISSN 1029-8479
Publisher:
Springer Nature
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS; Atomic, Nuclear and Particle Physics; Effective Field Theories; Neutrino Physics; Chiral Lagrangians

Citation Formats

Mereghetti, Emanuele, Fuyuto, Kaori, Dekens, Wouter Gerard, de Vries, Jordy, and Zhou, Guanghui. Sterile neutrinos and neutrinoless double beta decay in effective field theory. United States: N. p., 2020. Web. doi:10.1007/jhep06(2020)097.
Mereghetti, Emanuele, Fuyuto, Kaori, Dekens, Wouter Gerard, de Vries, Jordy, & Zhou, Guanghui. Sterile neutrinos and neutrinoless double beta decay in effective field theory. United States. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep06(2020)097
Mereghetti, Emanuele, Fuyuto, Kaori, Dekens, Wouter Gerard, de Vries, Jordy, and Zhou, Guanghui. Tue . "Sterile neutrinos and neutrinoless double beta decay in effective field theory". United States. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep06(2020)097. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1648097.
@article{osti_1648097,
title = {Sterile neutrinos and neutrinoless double beta decay in effective field theory},
author = {Mereghetti, Emanuele and Fuyuto, Kaori and Dekens, Wouter Gerard and de Vries, Jordy and Zhou, Guanghui},
abstractNote = {We investigate neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) in the presence of sterile neutrinos with Majorana mass terms. These gauge-singlet fields are allowed to interact with Standard-Model (SM) fields via renormalizable Yukawa couplings as well as higher-dimensional gauge-invariant operators up to dimension seven in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory extended with sterile neutrinos. At the GeV scale, we use Chiral effective field theory involving sterile neutrinos to connect the operators at the level of quarks and gluons to hadronic interactions involving pions and nucleons. This allows us to derive an expression for 0νββ rates for various isotopes in terms of phase-space factors, hadronic low-energy constants, nuclear matrix elements, the neutrino masses, and the Wilson coefficients of higher-dimensional operators. The required hadronic low-energy constants and nuclear matrix elements depend on the neutrino masses, for which we obtain interpolation formulae grounded in QCD and chiral perturbation theory that improve existing formulae that are only valid in a small regime of neutrino masses. The resulting framework can be used directly to assess the impact of 0νββ experiments on scenarios with light sterile neutrinos and should prove useful in global analyses of sterile-neutrino searches. We per- form several phenomenological studies of 0νββ in the presence of sterile neutrinos with and without higher-dimensional operators. We find that non-standard interactions involving sterile neutrinos have a dramatic impact on 0νββ phenomenology, and next-generation experiments can probe such interactions up to scales of $\mathcal O$ (100) TeV.},
doi = {10.1007/jhep06(2020)097},
journal = {Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)},
number = 6,
volume = 2020,
place = {United States},
year = {Tue Jun 16 00:00:00 EDT 2020},
month = {Tue Jun 16 00:00:00 EDT 2020}
}

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