Search for heavy neutral leptons in $$W^+\rightarrow \mu ^{+}\mu ^{\pm }\, \text {jet}$$ decays

Journal article

Abstract A search is performed for heavy neutrinos in the decay of a W boson into two muons and a jet. The data set corresponds to an integrated luminosity of approximately $$3.0\, \text {fb} ^{-1} $$ 3.0 fb - 1 of proton–proton collision data at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and $$8\, \text {TeV} $$ 8 TeV collected with the LHCb experiment. Both same-sign and opposite-sign muons in the final state are considered. Data are found to be consistent with the expected background. Upper limits on the coupling of a heavy neutrino with the Standard Model neutrino are set at $$95\%$$ 95 % confidence level in the heavy-neutrino mass range from 5 to $$50\, \text {GeV/}c^2 $$ 50 GeV/ c 2 . These are of the order of $$10^{-3}$$ 10 - 3 for lepton-number-conserving decays and of the order of $$10^{-4}$$ 10 - 4 for lepton-number-violating heavy-neutrino decays.

Authors: Aaij, R; Abellán Beteta, C; Ackernley, T; Adeva, B; Adinolfi, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: SpringerOpen
• Journal: The European Physical Journal C
• Volume: 81
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 248
• Article number: 248
• Publication date: 2021-03-22
• DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-08973-5
• EISSN: 1434-6052
• ISSN: 1434-6044
• Language: English
• Keywords: Neutrino; Muon; Physics; Electron; Lepton; Galaxy; Particle physics; Luminosity; Astrophysics; Nuclear physics; Standard Model (mathematical formulation); Jet (fluid)