Testing a neutrino mass generation mechanism at the Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider could be a discovery machine for the neutrino mass pattern and its Majorana nature in the context of a well-motivated TeV scale Type II seesaw model. This is achieved by identifying the flavor structure of the lepton-number violating decays of the charged Higgs bosons. The observation of either H⁺-->tau⁺[overline nu ] or H⁺-->e⁺[overline nu ] will be particularly robust to determine the neutrino spectra since they are independent of the unknown Majorana phases, which could be probed via the H⁺⁺-->e_i⁺e_j⁺ decays. In a less favorable scenario when the leptonic channels are suppressed, one needs to observe the decays H⁺-->W⁺H₁ and H⁺-->t[overline b] to confirm the triplet-doublet mixing that implies the Type II relation. The associated production H^±±H^-/+ is crucial in order to test the triplet nature of the Higgs field.

©2008 The American Physical Society