• Open Access

Lepton-number-charged scalars and neutrino beamstrahlung

Jeffrey M. Berryman, André de Gouvêa, Kevin J. Kelly, and Yue Zhang
Phys. Rev. D 97, 075030 – Published 23 April 2018

Abstract

Experimentally, baryon number minus lepton number, BL, appears to be a good global symmetry of nature. We explore the consequences of the existence of gauge-singlet scalar fields charged under BL–dubbed lepton-number-charged scalars (LeNCSs)—and postulate that these couple to the standard model degrees of freedom in such a way that BL 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 BL 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.

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  • 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

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Particles & Fields

Authors & Affiliations

Jeffrey M. Berryman1, André de Gouvêa2, Kevin J. Kelly2, and Yue Zhang2,3

  • 1Center for Neutrino Physics, Department of Physics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA
  • 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA
  • 3Theoretical Physics Department, Fermilab, P.O. Box 500, Batavia, Illinois 60510, USA

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Issue

Vol. 97, Iss. 7 — 1 April 2018

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