Published December 28, 2006 | Version v1
Journal article

Majorana neutrinos and lepton-number-violating signals in top-quark and W-boson rare decays

  • 1. Physics Department, Technion-Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000 (Israel)
  • 2. Institute for Theoretical Science, University of Oregon, OR 97403 (United States)
  • 3. Theory Group, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973 (United States)

Description

We discuss rare lepton-number-violating top-quark and W-boson four-body decays to final states containing a same-charge lepton pair, of the same or of different flavors: t→bW-l i+l j+ and W+→JJ-bar 'l i+l j+, where i≠j or i=j and JJ-bar ' stands for two light jets originating from a u-bar d or a c-bar s pair. These ΔL=2 decays are forbidden in the Standard Model and may be mediated by exchanges of Majorana neutrinos. We adopt a model independent approach for the Majorana neutrinos mixing pattern and calculate the branching ratios (BR) for these decays. We find, for example, that for O(1) mixings between heavy and light Majorana neutrinos (not likely but not ruled out) and if at least one of the heavy Majorana neutrinos has a mass of ∼< 100 GeV, then the BR's for these decays are: BR(t→bl i+l j+W-)∼10-4 and BR(W+→l i+l j+JJ-bar')∼10-7 if mN∼100 GeV and BR(t→bl i+l j+JJ-bar')∼BR(W+→l i+l j+JJ-bar')∼0.01 if mN ∼< 50 GeV. Taking into account the present limits on the neutrino mixing parameters, we obtain more realistic values for these BR's: BR(t→bl i+l j+W-)∼10-6 and BR(W+→l i+l j+JJ-bar')∼10-10 for mN∼100 GeV and BR(t→bl i+l j+JJ-bar')∼BR(W+→l i+l j+JJ-bar')∼10-6 for mN ∼< 50 GeV

Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1016/j.physletb.2006.10.060;
arXiv
arXiv:hep-ph/0608309v2;
PII
S0370-2693(06)01376-1;

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physics Letters. Section B
Journal Volume
643
Journal Issue
6
Journal Page Range
p. 342-347
ISSN
0370-2693
CODEN
PYLBAJ

Optional Information

Copyright
Copyright (c) 2006 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved.