Right-Handed Neutrinos at LHC and the Mechanism of Neutrino Mass Generation

Joern Kersten, Alexei Yu. Smirnov

Published 2007-05-22, updated 2007-09-14Version 2

We consider the possibility to detect right-handed neutrinos, which are mostly singlets of the Standard Model gauge group, at future accelerators. Substantial mixing of these neutrinos with the active neutrinos requires a cancellation of different contributions to the light neutrino mass matrix at the level of 10^{-8}. We discuss possible symmetries behind this cancellation and argue that they always lead to conservation of total lepton number. Light neutrino masses can be generated by small perturbations violating these symmetries. In the most general case, LHC physics and the mechanism of neutrino mass generation are essentially decoupled; with additional assumptions, correlations can appear between collider observables and features of the neutrino mass matrix.