Signatures of Dirac and Majorana Sterile Neutrinos in Trilepton Events at the LHC

Heavy sterile neutrinos with masses below $M_W$ can induce trilepton events at the 14 TeV LHC through purely leptonic $W$ decays of $W^\pm \to e^\pm e^\pm \mu^\mp \nu$ and $\mu^\pm \mu^\pm e^\mp \nu$ where the heavy neutrino will be in an intermediate state on its mass shell. Discovery and exclusion limits for the heavy neutrinos are found using both Cut-and-Count (CC) and a Multi-Variate Analysis (MVA) methods in this study. We also show that it is possible to discriminate between a Dirac and a Majorana heavy neutrino, even when lepton number conservation cannot be directly tested due to unobservability of the final state neutrino. This discrimination is done by exploiting a combined set of kinematic observables that differ between the Majorana vs. Dirac cases. We find that the MVA method can greatly enhance the discovering and discrimination limits in comparison with the CC method. For a 14-TeV $pp$ collider with integrated luminosity of 3000 ${\rm fb}^{-1}$, sterile neutrinos can be found with 5$\sigma$ significance if heavy-to-light neutrino mixings $|U_{Ne}|^2 \sim |U_{N\mu}|^2 \sim 10^{-6}$, while the Majorana vs. Dirac type can be distinguished if $|U_{Ne}|^2 \sim |U_{N\mu}|^2 \sim 10^{-5}$ or even $|U_{N\ell}|^2\sim 10^{-6}$ if one of the mixing elements is at least an order of magnitude smaller than the other.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figure

Technicolor contribution to lepton + photon + missing energy events at the Tevatron

Events with one lepton, one photon and missing energy are the subject of recent searches at the Fermilab Tevatron. We compute possible contributions to these type of events from the process p pbar --> photon l nu_l nu_tau nubar_tau, where l=e,mu in the context of a Low Scale Technicolor Model. We find that with somewhat tighter cuts than the ones used in the CDF search, it could be possible to either confirm or exclude this model in a small region of its parameter space.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Improved text and figures, including comments and new reference

Search for Heavy Sterile Neutrinos in Trileptons at the LHC

We present a search strategy for both Dirac and Majorana sterile neutrinos from the purely leptonic decays of $W^\pm \to e^\pm e^\pm \mu^\mp \nu$ and $\mu^\pm \mu^\pm e^\mp \nu$ at the 14 TeV LHC. The discovery and exclusion limits for sterile neutrinos are shown using both the Cut-and-Count (CC) and Multi-Variate Analysis (MVA) methods. We also discriminate between Dirac and Majorana sterile neutrinos by exploiting a set of kinematic observables which differ between the Dirac and Majorana cases. We find that the MVA method, compared to the more common CC method, can greatly enhance the discovery and discrimination limits. Two benchmark points with sterile neutrino mass $m_N = 20$ GeV and 50 GeV are tested. For an integrated luminosity of 3000 ${\rm fb}^{-1}$, sterile neutrinos can be found with $5 \sigma$ significance if heavy-to-light neutrino mixings $|U_{Ne}|^2 \sim |U_{N\mu}|^2\sim 10^{-6}$, while Majorana vs. Dirac discrimination can be reached if at least one of the mixings is of order $10^{-5}$.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1703.0193

Neutrino emission rates in highly magnetized neutron stars revisited

Magnetars are a subclass of neutron stars whose intense soft-gamma-ray bursts and quiescent X-ray emission are believed to be powered by the decay of a strong internal magnetic field. We reanalyze neutrino emission in such stars in the plausibly relevant regime in which the Landau band spacing of both protons and electrons is much larger than kT (where k is the Boltzmann constant and T is the temperature), but still much smaller than the Fermi energies. Focusing on the direct Urca process, we find that the emissivity oscillates as a function of density or magnetic field, peaking when the Fermi level of the protons or electrons lies about 3kT above the bottom of any of their Landau bands. The oscillation amplitude is comparable to the average emissivity when the Landau band spacing mentioned above is roughly the geometric mean of kT and the Fermi energy (excluding mass), i. e., at fields much weaker than required to confine all particles to the lowest Landau band. Since the density and magnetic field strength vary continuously inside the neutron star, there will be alternating surfaces of high and low emissivity. Globally, these oscillations tend to average out, making it unclear whether there will be any observable effects.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures; accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Long-term X-ray changes in the emission from the anomalous X-ray pulsar 4U 0142+61

We present results obtained from X-ray observations of the anomalous X-ray pulsar (AXP) 4U 0142+61 taken between 2000-2007 using XMM-Newton, Chandra and Swift. In observations taken before 2006, the pulse profile is observed to become more sinusoidal and the pulsed fraction increased with time. These results confirm those derived using the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer and expand the observed evolution to energies below 2 keV. The XMM-Newton total flux in the 0.5-10 keV band is observed to be nearly constant in observations taken before 2006, while an increase of ~10% is seen afterwards and coincides with the burst activity detected from the source in 2006-2007. After these bursts, the evolution towards more sinusoidal pulse profiles ceased while the pulsed fraction showed a further increase. No evidence for large-scale, long-term changes in the emission as a result of the bursts is seen. The data also suggest a correlation between the flux and hardness of the spectrum, with brighter observations on average having a harder spectrum. As pointed out by other authors, we find that the standard blackbody plus power-law model does not provide the best spectral fit to the emission from 4U 0142+61. We also report on observations taken with the Gemini telescope after two bursts. These observations show source magnitudes consistent with previous measurements. Our results demonstrate the wide range of X-ray variability characteristics seen in AXPs and we discuss them in light of current emission models for these sources.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, in emulateapj style. Submitted to Ap

Lepton flavor violation in muonium decay and muon colliders in models with heavy neutrinos

We study the lepton-flavor-violating reaction $\mu^+ e^- \to e^+ e^-$ within two extensions of the standard model that include heavy neutrinos. The reaction is studied in the low energy limit in the form of muonium decay $M\to e^+ e^-$ and in the high energy regime of a muon collider. The two theoretical models we consider are: model I, a typical see-saw model that violates lepton flavor and number by inclusion of extra right handed neutrinos, and model II, a variant where lepton number is conserved and which includes extra right handed as well as left handed neutrinos, singlets under the gauge group. We find for muonium decay into $e^+e^-$ the extremely small result $Br(M\to e^+ e^-) < 10^{-19}$ in both scenarios. Alternatively, for $\mu^+ e^-$ collisions up to $\sqrt{s}\sim 50$ GeV we find $\sigma(\mu^+ e^- \to e^+ e^-)< 10^{-5}$ fb, while for energies above the $W^+ W^-$ threshold we find $\sigma(\mu^+ e^- \to W^+ W^-)$ up to 1 fb.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures; new version recalculates the figures and results using the correlated bound on mu-e mixing from $B(\mu\to e\gamma)$ (Eq.34