Abstract
Experimentally, baryon number minus lepton number, , appears to be a good global symmetry of nature. We explore the consequences of the existence of gauge-singlet scalar fields charged under –dubbed lepton-number-charged scalars (LeNCSs)—and postulate that these couple to the standard model degrees of freedom in such a way that is conserved even at the nonrenormalizable level. In this framework, neutrinos are Dirac fermions. Including only the lowest mass-dimension effective operators, some of the LeNCSs couple predominantly to neutrinos and may be produced in terrestrial neutrino experiments. We examine several existing constraints from particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology to the existence of a LeNCS carrying charge equal to two, and discuss the emission of LeNCSs via “neutrino beamstrahlung,” which occurs every once in a while when neutrinos scatter off of ordinary matter. We identify regions of the parameter space where existing and future neutrino experiments, including the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, are at the frontier of searches for such new phenomena.
- Received 26 February 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.075030
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.
Published by the American Physical Society