Lepton-trijet and displaced vertex searches for heavy neutrinos at future electron-proton colliders

Abstract

Abstract Electron proton (ep) colliders could provide particle collisions at TeV energies with large data rates while maintaining the clean and pile up-free environment of lepton colliders, which makes them very attractive for heavy neutrino searches. Heavy (mainly sterile) neutrinos with masses around the electroweak scale are proposed in low scale seesaw models for neutrino mass generation. In this paper, we analyse two of the most promising signatures of heavy neutrinos at ep colliders, the lepton-flavour violating (LFV) lepton-trijet signature and the displaced vertex signature. In the considered benchmark model, we find that for heavy neutrino masses around a few hundred GeV, the LFV lepton-trijet signature at ep colliders yields the best sensitivity of all currently discussed heavy neutrino signatures (analysed at the reconstructed level) up to now.