Neutrino masses and mixing, lightest neutralino decays and a solution to the μ problem in supersymmetry

Abstract

We examine in detail the neutrino masses and mixing patterns in an extension of the minimal supersymmetric standard model with three gauge-singlet neutrinos and R-parity violation. The Majorana masses for the gauge-singlet neutrinos as well as the usual $\mu$-term for the Higgs superfields are generated at the electroweak scale through the vacuum expectation values of the singlet sneutrinos. The resulting effective mass matrix for the three light neutrinos have contributions from the seesaw mechanism involving the singlet neutrinos as well as due to the mixing with the heavy neutralinos. This model is popularly known in the literature as the "$\mu$ from $\nu$ supersymmetric standard model" ($\mu\nu$SSM). We show that even with flavour diagonal neutrino Yukawa couplings, the global data on three-flavour neutrinos can be well accounted for in this scenario, at the tree level. We also analyze the mixing in the chargino and the Higgs sector and calculate the decays of the lightest supersymmetric particle in this model. The decay branching ratios show certain correlations with the neutrino mixing angles, which can be tested at the LHC. Some other phenomenological implications of such a model have been discussed.