LHC phenomenology of the type II seesaw mechanism: Nondegenerate case

Abstract

In this paper, we thoroughly investigate the LHC phenomenology of the type II seesaw mechanism for neutrino masses in the nondegenerate case where the triplet scalars of various charge ($H^{\pm\pm}, H^\pm, H^0, A^0$) have different masses. Compared with the degenerate case, the cascade decays of scalars lead to many new, interesting signal channels. In the positive scenario where $M_{H^{\pm\pm}}<M_{H^\pm}<M_{H^0/A^0}$, the four-lepton signal is still the most promising discovery channel for the doubly-charged scalars $H^{\pm\pm}$. The five-lepton signal is crucial to probe the mass spectrum of the scalars, for which, for example, a $5\sigma$ reach at 14 TeV LHC for $M_{H^{\pm}}=430 GeV$ with $M_{H^{\pm\pm}}=400 GeV$ requires an integrated luminosity of 76/fb. And the six-lepton signal can be used to probe the neutral scalars $H^0/A^0$, which are usually hard to detect in the degenerate case. In the negative scenario where $M_{H^{\pm\pm}}>M_{H^\pm}>M_{H^0/A^0}$, the detection of $H^{\pm\pm}$ is more challenging, when the cascade decay $H^{\pm\pm}\to H^{\pm}W^{\pm*}$ is dominant. The most important channel is the associated $H^{\pm}H^0/A^0$ production in the final state $\ell^\pm\cancel{E}_Tb\bar{b}b\bar{b}$, which requires a luminosity of 109/fb for a $5\sigma$ discovery, while the final state $\ell^\pm\cancel{E}_Tb\bar{b}\tau^+\tau^-$ is less promising. Moreover, the associated $H^0A^0$ production can give same signals as the standard model Higgs pair production. With a much larger cross section, the $H^0A^0$ production in the final state $b\bar{b}\tau^+\tau^-$ could reach $3\sigma$ significance at 14 TeV LHC with a luminosity of 300/fb. In summary, with an integrated luminosity of order 500/fb, the triplet scalars can be fully reconstructed at 14 TeV LHC in the negative scenario.