Daniel La Rocco (UC Irvine) [HET Lunch Seminar] : Simulating and Characterizing HNLs at Forward Physics Experiments
https://bnl.zoomgov.com/j/1610974905?pwd=RNUmaMcDbNYgeIBiawRl8bqdx0ICcI.1
2-160
Heavy Neutral Leptons (HNLs) are a well-motivated extension of the Standard Model which may provide explanations for observed neutrino masses, dark matter, and baryogengesis via leptogenesis. In this seminar, we present a user-friendly, fast, and flexible simulation framework built in FORESEE, which allows for the calculation of production rates, decay rates, lifetimes and sensitivity estimates of HNLs at forward physics experiments. We use this framework to study the discovery prospects for FASER/FASER2 for the standard PBC benchmarks, Ue:Umu:Utau = 1:0:0, 0:1:0, and 0:0:1, as well as the more recently proposed and better motivated benchmarks 0:1:1 and 1:1:1, where we find that our projections extend into currently unconstrained regions of parameter space. Additionally, we consider the capability of FASER2 to measure HNL model parameters in the event of a HNL signal detection and determine the Majorana or Dirac nature of neutrinos through kinematic measurements, or by using FASER2 as a trigger for ATLAS to measure the charge of the muons produced in association with HNLs to search for lepton number violation.