Probing Neutrino Compositeness with Displaced Signals
by
IFAE Seminar Room
In-person
Neutrinos are among the most mysterious particles in the Standard Model. The extraordinary smallness of their masses hints at the possibility of physics beyond the Standard Model, potentially involving the presence of multiple sterile neutrinos to explain such tiny mass values. In this talk, I will explore scenarios in which neutrinos couple to a composite sterile sector, giving rise to rich and unconventional signatures. When the confinement scale of the sterile sector lies below the center-of-mass energy of the collision, neutrinos can effectively disintegrate into dark-sector jets. As these jets evolve, they generate a dark shower in which light dark states form and decay into Standard Model particles with finite lifetimes. Depending on where these decays occur, the experimental signatures can vary: decays outside the detector lead to invisible jets manifested as missing energy, while smaller decay lengths produce emerging jets of Standard Model particles. I will present predictions for event rates associated with these phenomena at upcoming neutrino beamline facilities, highlighting their potential to probe regions of dark-sector parameter space.
Dorian Amaral, Elia Bertoldo, Francesco Sciotti