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Title: Neutrinoless double beta decay versus other probes of heavy sterile neutrinos

Journal Article · · Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)
 [1];  [2];  [3]
  1. Univ. College London (United Kingdom). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy; Yale Univ., New Haven, CT (United States). Wright Nuclear Structure Lab.
  2. Univ. College London (United Kingdom). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy; Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien (Austria). Institut für Hochenergiephysik
  3. Washington Univ., St. Louis, MO (United States). McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences. Dept. of Physics

We make a comparative study of the neutrinoless double beta decay constraints on heavy sterile neutrinos versus other direct and indirect constraints from both lepton number conserving and violating processes, as a sensitive probe of the extent of lepton number violation and possible interference effects in the sterile sector. We introduce a phenomenological parametrisation of the simplified one-generation seesaw model with one active and two sterile neutrino states in terms of experimentally measurable quantities, such as active-sterile neutrino mixing angles, CP phases, masses and mass splittings. This simple parametrisation enables us to analytically derive a spectrum of possible scenarios between the canonical seesaw with purely Majorana heavy neutrinos and inverse seesaw with pseudo-Dirac ones. We then go on to constrain the simplified parameters of this model from various experiments at the energy, intensity and cosmic frontiers. We emphasise that the constraints from lepton number violating processes strongly depend on the mass splitting between the two sterile states and the relative CP phase between them. This is particularly relevant for neutrinoless double beta decay, which is weakened for small mass splitting and opposite CP parities between the sterile states. On the other hand, neutrinoless double beta decay is especially sensitive for Majorana sterile neutrinos with masses around 0.1-10 GeV.

Research Organization:
Washington Univ., St. Louis, MO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0017987
OSTI ID:
1803203
Journal Information:
Journal of High Energy Physics (Online), Vol. 2020, Issue 3; ISSN 1029-8479
Publisher:
Springer BerlinCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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