The phenomenology of neutral heavy leptons
Abstract
Description
Naturally small neutrino masses can arise in some grand unified models. The mechanism of neutrino mass generation in these models typically requires the existence of neutral heavy leptons. We study the low-energy phenomenology of these new fermions. Concentrating on loop corrections due to neutral heavy leptons, we examine how the flavour-conserving leptonic decays of the Z boson, universality breaking in these decays, and the W boson mass depend on the mass and mixings of the neutral heavy leptons. Working within the framework of a superstring-inspired SU(2)_L x U(1)_Y model, we show that these flavour-conserving processes have some virtues over the traditionally considered flavour-violating decays.
Ph.D. thesis, 170 pages, LaTeX, 34 figures (embedded)
Ph.D. thesis, 170 pages, LaTeX, 34 figures (embedded)