Space–time evolution of heavy sterile neutrinos in cascade decays

Heavy sterile-like neutrinos may be produced resonantly from the decay of pseudoscalar mesons and may decay into several different channels in a cascade Φ→Lανh; νh→{X}. In general these are rare events with displaced vertices. We provide a non-perturbative and manifestly unitary framework that descr...

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Main Author: Daniel Boyanovsky
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2014-11-01
Series:Nuclear Physics B
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S055032131400296X
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author Daniel Boyanovsky
author_facet Daniel Boyanovsky
author_sort Daniel Boyanovsky
collection DOAJ
description Heavy sterile-like neutrinos may be produced resonantly from the decay of pseudoscalar mesons and may decay into several different channels in a cascade Φ→Lανh; νh→{X}. In general these are rare events with displaced vertices. We provide a non-perturbative and manifestly unitary framework that describes the cascade decay and yields the space–time evolution of the probabilities for sterile neutrinos, final states and the total number of events at a far detector. The results are general, valid for Dirac or Majorana neutrinos and only input the total decay rates and branching ratios for the production and decay channels. We apply the results to two examples of “visible” decay: (i) K+→e+νh→(e+)e+e−νe via a standard model charged current vertex and (ii) the radiative decay K+→μ+νh→(μ+)νaγ. For this latter cascade process we find substantial corrections to previous assessments within the parameter space argued to solve the anomalous excess of electron-like events at MiniBooNE.
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spelling doaj.art-a69aefdd5e4b4e0fb35cc54e6a4c55342022-12-21T19:12:26ZengElsevierNuclear Physics B0550-32131873-15622014-11-01888C24827010.1016/j.nuclphysb.2014.09.018Space–time evolution of heavy sterile neutrinos in cascade decaysDaniel BoyanovskyHeavy sterile-like neutrinos may be produced resonantly from the decay of pseudoscalar mesons and may decay into several different channels in a cascade Φ→Lανh; νh→{X}. In general these are rare events with displaced vertices. We provide a non-perturbative and manifestly unitary framework that describes the cascade decay and yields the space–time evolution of the probabilities for sterile neutrinos, final states and the total number of events at a far detector. The results are general, valid for Dirac or Majorana neutrinos and only input the total decay rates and branching ratios for the production and decay channels. We apply the results to two examples of “visible” decay: (i) K+→e+νh→(e+)e+e−νe via a standard model charged current vertex and (ii) the radiative decay K+→μ+νh→(μ+)νaγ. For this latter cascade process we find substantial corrections to previous assessments within the parameter space argued to solve the anomalous excess of electron-like events at MiniBooNE.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S055032131400296X
spellingShingle Daniel Boyanovsky
Space–time evolution of heavy sterile neutrinos in cascade decays
Nuclear Physics B
title Space–time evolution of heavy sterile neutrinos in cascade decays
title_full Space–time evolution of heavy sterile neutrinos in cascade decays
title_fullStr Space–time evolution of heavy sterile neutrinos in cascade decays
title_full_unstemmed Space–time evolution of heavy sterile neutrinos in cascade decays
title_short Space–time evolution of heavy sterile neutrinos in cascade decays
title_sort space time evolution of heavy sterile neutrinos in cascade decays
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S055032131400296X
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