A First Search for Heavy Neutral Leptons with a Liquid-argon Detector
by
Sala de Conferências
Departamento de Física
Heavy Neutral Leptons are invoked in many models attempting to explain the origin fo the neutrino masses, dark matter and baryogenesis. If their masses are at the 100 MeV scale, they would be able to be produced along with Standard Model neutrinos in beamlines, such as the one servicing the liquid argon time projection chambers of the SBN programme, which includes the MicroBooNE detector. An interesting feature of their larger mass would be a significantly larger time-of-flight, compared to Standard Model neutrinos, that would allow them to be easily discriminated from their lighter counterparts. I introduce methods and techniques used to identify decays of Heavy Neutral Leptons in liquid argon time projection chambers and present the results of a search for Heavy Neutral Leptons using MicroBooNE's data.
Filipe Veloso e Pedro Costa