Exploring mixed lepton-quark interactions in non-resonant leptoquark production at the LHC

Searches for new physics (NP) at particle colliders typically involve multivariate analysis of kinematic distributions of final state particles produced in a decay of a hypothetical NP resonance. Since the pair-production cross-sections mediated by such resonances are strongly suppressed by the NP scale, this analysis becomes less relevant for NP searches for masses of the BSM resonance above 1 TeV. On the other hand, $t$-channel processes are less sensitive to the mass of the virtual mediator and therefore larger phase-space can be potentially probed as well as the couplings between the NP particles and the Standard Model fields. The fact that transitions between different generations of quarks and leptons may exist, the potential of the search presented in this article can be used, as a reference guide, to enlarge significantly the scope of searches performed at the LHC to flavour off-diagonal channels, in a theoretically consistent approach. In this work, we study non-resonant production of scalar leptoquarks which have been proposed in the literature to provide a potential avenue for radiative generation of neutrino masses, accommodating as well the existing flavour physics data. Final states involving just two muons at the LHC ($\mu^+, \mu^-$), are used as a well-motivated case study.