Neutral heavy lepton production at next high energy $e^+e^-$ linear colliders

Almeida Jr., F. M. L.; Coutinho, Y. A.; Simoes, J. A. Martins; Vale, M. A. B. do

Neutral heavy lepton production at next high energy $e^+e^-$ linear colliders

Authors

Almeida Jr., F. M. L.

Coutinho, Y. A.

Simoes, J. A. Martins

Vale, M. A. B. do

Description

The discovery potential for detecting new heavy Majorana and Dirac neutrinos at some recently proposed high energy $e^+e^-$ colliders is discussed. These new particles are suggested by grand unified theories and superstring-inspired models. For these models the production of a single heavy neutrino is shown to be more relevant than pair production when comparing cross sections and neutrino mass ranges. The process $ e^+e^- \longrightarrow ν e^{\pm} W^{\mp}$ is calculated including on-shell and off-shell heavy neutrino effects. We present a detailed study of cross sections and distributions that shows a clear separation between the signal and standard model contributions, even after including hadronization effects.
4 pages including 15 figures, 1 table. RevTex. Accepted in Physical Review D