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Reinterpreting the ATLAS bounds on heavy neutral leptons in a realistic neutrino oscillation model

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arxiv 2107.12980 v2 pith:VXK4UOOZ submitted 2021-07-27 hep-ph hep-ex

classification hep-phhep-ex
keywords experimentalhnlslimitsmodelneutrinorealisticmixingreinterpretation
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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Heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) are hypothetical particles, motivated in the first place by their ability to explain neutrino oscillations. Experimental searches for HNLs are typically conducted under the assumption of a single HNL mixing with a single neutrino flavor. However, the resulting exclusion limits may not directly constrain the corresponding mixing angles in realistic HNL models -- those which can explain neutrino oscillations. The reinterpretation of the results of these experimental searches turns out to be a non-trivial task, that requires significant knowledge of the details of the experiment. In this work, we perform a reinterpretation of the latest ATLAS search for HNLs decaying promptly to a tri-lepton final state. We show that in a realistic model with two HNLs, the actual limits can vary by several orders of magnitude depending on the free parameters of the model. Marginalizing over the unknown model parameters leads to an exclusion limit on the total mixing angle which can be up to 3 orders of magnitude weaker than the limits reported in arXiv:1905.09787. This demonstrates that the reinterpretation of results from experimental searches is a necessary step to obtain meaningful limits on realistic models. We detail a few steps that can be taken by experimental collaborations in order to simplify the reuse of their results.

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Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Heavy neutral leptons from light scalar in fixed target and forward search experiments

    hep-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    SHiP and FPF@FCC-hh are projected to extend experimental sensitivity to a light scalar mixing with the Higgs and to long-lived heavy neutrinos in a B-L seesaw model, with SHiP strongest for scalar masses around 0.5-1 GeV.

  2. Neutrino t-channels at Colliders: When Light Neutrinos Matter

    hep-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    The same-sign WW→ℓℓ t-channel signal for heavy Majorana neutrinos is cancelled by light-neutrino contributions in the seesaw model; the opposite-sign eµjj channel is a better probe.

  3. Revealing Neutrino Mass Ordering at CEPC and FCC-ee

    hep-ph 2026-01 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    In the minimal two-HNL seesaw, heavy neutral lepton flavor mixings encode the normal vs inverted neutrino mass ordering, and CEPC/FCC-ee could distinguish them for total mixing U_tot^2 ≳ 10^-6.

  4. Constraining Heavy Neutral Leptons Coupled to the Tau-Neutrino Flavor at the Large Hadron Collider

    hep-ph 2025-10 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    DV searches with no prompt-lepton tag can probe HNLs with dominant tau-neutrino mixing at the LHC, improving existing bounds by more than an order of magnitude at Run 2 luminosity.

  5. Search for heavy neutral leptons in decays of W bosons produced in 13 TeV pp collisions using prompt signatures in the ATLAS detector

    hep-ex 2025-08 accept novelty 4.0 of 10

    The ATLAS search finds no evidence of heavy neutral leptons in W boson decays and sets the strongest limits to date on their mixing with electron and muon neutrinos in the 15-30 GeV mass range.

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