CMS-PAS-EXO-21-003

CMS-PAS-EXO-21-003
Probing Majorana neutrinos and the Weinberg operator in the same-charge dimuon channel through vector boson fusion processes in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}= $ 13 TeV
CMS Collaboration
March 2022

Abstract: A first search probing Majorana neutrinos and the Weinberg operator in vector boson fusion processes at the LHC is presented. The search is performed in the same-charge dimuon final state using a proton-proton collision data set, recorded by the CMS detector, at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV and corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{-1}$. The final state consists of two well-identified isolated muons with the same charge, and two jets with a large rapidity separation as well as a large dijet mass. The results are found to agree with the predictions of the standard model. Constraints are derived on model parameters accordingly. These limits significantly extend the mass range probed for heavy Majorana neutrinos compared with previous searches at the LHC. They also serve as a first test of the Weinberg operator at colliders.
Links: CDS record (PDF) ; Physics Briefing ; CADI line (restricted) ; These preliminary results are superseded in this paper, PRL 131 (2023) 011803. The superseded preliminary plots can be found here.

Figures & Tables	Summary	References	CMS Publications

Figures
png pdf	Figure 1: Example Feynman diagrams of VBF processes with heavy Majorana neutrino production (left) and processes mediated by the Weinberg operator (right) at the LHC.
png pdf	Figure 1-a: Example Feynman diagrams of VBF processes with heavy Majorana neutrino production (left) and processes mediated by the Weinberg operator (right) at the LHC.
png pdf	Figure 1-b: Example Feynman diagrams of VBF processes with heavy Majorana neutrino production (left) and processes mediated by the Weinberg operator (right) at the LHC.
png pdf	Figure 2: Post-fit distributions of $ {H_{\mathrm {T}}} / {p_{\mathrm {T}}} ^{\mu _{1}}$. For the heavy Majorana neutrino analysis, the three CRs and the two $ {\Delta \phi _{\ell \ell}} $ bins in the SR are fitted simultaneously. For the Weinberg operator analysis, the three CRs and the two ${{p_{\mathrm {T}}} ^\text {miss}}$ bins in the SR are fitted simultaneously. The lines indicate the scaled expected distributions of the heavy Majorana neutrino process with $m_{N} = $ 750 GeV (solid red), 1.5 TeV (dashed red), 5.0 TeV (dotted red), and of the Weinberg operator process (blue).
png pdf	Figure 3: Upper limits on $ {\| V_{\mu N} \|}^{2}$ at the 95% CL as a function of $m_{N}$. The black dashed curve is the expected upper limit, where one and two standard deviation bands are indicated in lime green and light yellow, respectively. The solid black curve is the observed upper limit. The red dashed curve indicates observed upper limits from Ref. [9], while the blue dashed curve shows the observed upper limits from Ref. [12]. Starting from $m_{N}$ around 650 GeV, the analysis presented in this note improves upon the upper limits from those references.

Tables
png pdf	Table 1: Signal region and WZ control region definitions.

Summary

In summary, this note presents the first search for TeV mass scale Majorana neutrinos and a first probe of the Weinberg operator at the LHC. Vector boson fusion processes resulting in a dimuon final state are studied. The results agree with the predictions from the standard model, and upper limits are set on the model parameters accordingly. For heavy Majorana neutrinos, upper limits on $|V_{\mu N}|^{2}$ are set for the mass range 750 GeV $< m_{N} < $ 25 TeV, which is a significant improvement compared to previous searches at the LHC. The highest mass exclusion at $|V_{\mu N}|^{2}=$ 1 is around 23.30 TeV. For the Weinberg operator, the observed (expected) 95% confidence level upper limit on the effective $\mu\mu$ Majorana mass is $|m_{\mu\mu}|=$ 10.84 (12.84) GeV. This is the first time such constraints have been obtained for this process.

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