The Dirac or Majorana nature of neutrinos remains one of the most fundamental open problems in particle physics. A natural intermediate scenario arises when small lepton-number-violating Majorana mass terms break the exact Dirac symmetry. These cause mass eigenstates to form nearly degenerate pairs, each separated by a small mass splitting. We study this quasi-Dirac scenario within a five-neutrino framework, extending the Standard Model by two right-handed neutrinos, which form a nearly degenerate sterile pair alongside the three active states. This extended mixing structure introduces additional phenomenological parameters, including new mixing angles, mass splittings, and CP phases. We use appearance and disappearance data from NO$\nu$A and T2K to constrain the active-sterile mixing angles $\theta_{sa}$ and the mass splitting within the sterile pair $\Delta m_{54}^2$ and forecast the sensitivity achievable at DUNE. We analyse how these parameters modify CP-violating observables relative to the standard three-neutrino case, comparing predicted event rates across both mass orderings and as a function of $\delta_{CP}$.
The experimental confirmation of non-vanishing neutrino masses at the sub-eV range poses a challenge for the (otherwise successful) Standard Model (SM). The EW-
$$\nu _R$$
ν
R
model, which gives a solution to this problem via a seesaw mechanism with non-sterile right-handed neutrinos at the electroweak scale, contains mirror fermion doublets and singlets with opposite chirality assignments under the same
$$SU_W(2)$$
S
U
W
(
2
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gauge symmetry. It also features a viable dark-matter candidate and proposes a solution to the strong CP problem. The (electroweak scale) mirror quarks (leptons) decay to SM quarks (leptons) plus very light neutral scalars, giving final states with jets or leptons, scalar mesons and missing momentum. In this paper, we review the signatures through which these mirror particles can be probed at colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider. Emphasis is given to long-lived mirror particles, depending on the associated Yukawa couplings, that can give rise to observable displaced leptons and jets, and heavy hadrons.z
V. Mitsou, M. Staelens, Pham Quang Hung· The European Physical Journa...· 2 citations
Heavy Neutral Lepton (HNL)-mediated t-channel processes provide a unique opportunity to probe mass scales beyond the kinematic reach of direct production at high-energy colliders. We revisit these processes using the vector boson scattering channel $WW\to\ell\ell$ at the LHC as a case study, highlighting the essential role of the light neutrinos in restoring the proper high-energy unitary behavior of the scattering amplitude. Their inclusion, overlooked in some previous studies, leads to destructive interference that strongly suppresses lepton number violating signatures, demonstrating that a consistent treatment of the full seesaw spectrum qualitatively alters the phenomenology of t-channel HNL searches. This motivates the exploration of lepton number conserving but lepton flavor violating final states instead. We present a detailed analysis of the $pp\to e\mu jj$ channel and show that it provides a promising probe of TeV-scale HNLs in low-scale seesaw scenarios with sizable active-sterile mixing, extending the LHC sensitivity beyond existing direct searches.
C. García-García, Manuel González-López, Xabier Marcano et al.· 0 citations
The observation of neutrino masses strongly motivates $U(1)_{B-L}$ extensions of the Standard Model, in which heavy neutral leptons acquire Majorana masses through spontaneous $U(1)_{B-L}$ symmetry breaking and generate light neutrino masses via the seesaw mechanism. In this framework, the singlet scalar responsible for symmetry breaking mixes with the SM Higgs boson, allowing it to be produced in rare meson decays. We investigate a scenario in which this light scalar promptly decays into a pair of long-lived heavy neutrinos that subsequently decay into visible charged leptons and hadrons through light-heavy neutrino mixing inside the proposed Forward Physics Facility (FPF) at the FCC-hh and the SHiP beam-dump experiment. Taking into account realistic detector geometries, decay probabilities, and visible branching fractions, we estimate the projected sensitivities to the scalar-Higgs mixing angle as a function of the scalar mass and to the light-heavy neutrino mixing as a function of the heavy neutrino mass. We find that FPF and SHiP can significantly extend the discovery reach for both light scalars and long-lived heavy neutrinos beyond existing experimental limits, providing powerful and complementary probes of neutrino-mass generation and hidden-sector physics.
ShivaSankar K.A., Souvik Das, Arindam Das et al.· 0 citations
We study leptogenesis via out-of-equilibrium decays of right-handed neutrinos in a parity symmetric extension of the Standard Model with gauge group $SU(3)_c \times SU(2)_L \times SU(2)_R \times U(1)_X$, spontaneously broken to the Standard Model gauge group at a scale $v_R$. We focus on the minimal Higgs realization, in which the strong CP problem is resolved without invoking additional symmetries. In this framework, lepton number is violated through Yukawa interactions, while neutrino masses arise only at higher loop order, a feature that permits the CP-violating quantum corrections to right-handed neutrino decays to be parametrically large. For thermal production of right-handed neutrinos, we find that successful leptogenesis requires $v_R \gtrsim 6\times 10^{12}$ GeV. Non-thermal production, however, relaxes this bound dramatically, requiring only $v_R \gtrsim 10$ TeV, a scale accessible to collider searches for new particles and searches for rare processes.
Neutrino oscillations provide compelling evidence for physics beyond the Standard Model, while the weakly interacting nature of neutrinos makes them powerful probes of new interactions and hidden sectors. In this work, we investigate a \textit{dark neutrino portal} scenario in which neutrino mass generation is linked to a light dark sector charged under a new $U(1)_D$ gauge symmetry. While Standard Model fields remain neutral under $U(1)_D$, the dark neutrino sector is charged and communicates with the Standard Model exclusively through active--dark neutrino mixing. The associated neutrinophilic mediator induces ultra-long-range interactions, whereby electrons and neutrons in the Earth, Moon, Sun, Milky Way, and the cosmological matter distribution generate sizable matter potentials that modify neutrino oscillations. We explore the sensitivity of the upcoming Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), whose long baseline and pronounced matter effects make it uniquely suited to probe such interactions. We show that DUNE can access previously unexplored regions of parameter space and demonstrate that the same underlying coupling can simultaneously give rise to sizable neutrino self-interactions, including regions relevant for alleviating the Hubble tension, while remaining consistent with current neutrino oscillation constraints.
We present the first complete field-theoretic realization of the finite one-loop T4-3-i topology for Majorana neutrino mass. Here, T4-3-i denotes a one-loop realization of the Weinberg operator in which a fermion links the two external lepton--Higgs pairs. If this fermion is a Majorana singlet or triplet, the same interactions generate a tree-level type-I or type-III seesaw contribution, respectively, so that the loop is not the leading source of neutrino mass. This lower-order contribution is removed by taking the mediator to be a Dirac fermion $N$, placing lepton-number violation in a separate Majorana fermion $\psi$ inside the loop, and imposing an exact $Z_2$ symmetry that keeps the new scalars inert and stabilizes the lightest odd state. We classify the allowed electroweak charge assignments and study the minimal singlet-doublet realization, denoted T4-3-i-B1, which contains one Dirac fermion, one Majorana fermion, an inert scalar doublet, and an inert scalar singlet. The resulting rank-two neutrino mass matrix predicts one massless neutrino. We confront both normal and inverted neutrino-mass orderings with neutrino-oscillation and cosmological data, charged-lepton flavor violation, including $\mu-e$ conversion, electroweak precision observables, $h\to\gamma\gamma$, theoretical consistency conditions, the relic abundance, and direct-detection limits. Both fermionic and scalar dark matter are viable. The fermionic candidate has only a loop-induced Higgs coupling and consequently a strongly suppressed spin-independent scattering rate, whereas the scalar candidate couples through a tree-level Higgs portal and can lie above the neutrino floor while remaining compatible with current limits. In both cases, coannihilation with inert scalars is essential for reproducing the observed relic abundance.