No Arabic abstract
We revisit the effective field theory of the standard model that is extended with sterile neutrinos, $N$. We examine the basis of complete and independent effective operators involving $N$ up to mass dimension seven (dim-7). By employing equations of motion, integration by parts, and Fierz and group identities, we construct relations among operators that were considered independent in the previous literature, and find seven redundant operators at dim-6, sixteen redundant operators and two new operators at dim-7. The correct numbers of operators involving $N$ are, without counting Hermitian conjugates, $16~(Lcap B)+1~(slashed{L}cap B)+2~(slashed{L}capslashed{B})$ at dim-6, and $47~(slashed{L}cap B)+5~(slashed{L}capslashed{B})$ at dim-7. Here $L/B~(slashed L/slashed B)$ stands for lepton/baryon number conservation (violation). We verify our counting by the Hilbert series approach for $n_f$ generations of the standard model fermions and sterile neutrinos. When operators involving different flavors of fermions are counted separately and their Hermitian conjugates are included, we find there are $29~(1614)$ and $80~(4206)$ operators involving sterile neutrinos at dim-6 and dim-7 respectively for $n_f=1~(3)$.
In this article we consider the Standard Model extended by a number of (light) right-handed neutrinos, and assume the presence of some heavy physics that cannot be directly produced, but can be probed by its low-energy effective interactions. Within this scenario, we obtain all the gauge-invariant dimension-seven effective operators, and determine whether each of the operators can be generated at tree-level by the heavy physics, or whether it is necessarily loop generated. We then use the tree-generated operators, including those containing right-handed neutrinos, to put limits on the scale of new physics $ Lambda $ using low-energy measurements. We also study the production of same-sign dileptons at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and determine the constraints on the heavy physics that can be derived form existing data, as well as the reach in probing $ Lambda $ expected from future runs of this collider.
We present the full basis of effective operators relevant for dark matter direct detection, up to and including operators of mass dimension seven. We treat the cases where dark matter is either a Dirac fermion, a Majorana fermion, a complex scalar, or a real scalar, allowing for dark matter to furnish a general representation of the electroweak gauge group. We describe the algorithmic procedure used to obtain the minimal set of effective operators and provide the tree-level matching conditions onto the effective theory valid below the electroweak scale.
Electroweak baryogenesis is a simple and attractive candidate mechanism for generating the observed baryon asymmetry in the Universe. Its viability is sometimes investigated in terms of an effective field theory of the Standard Model involving higher dimension operators. We investigate the validity of such an effective field theory approach to the problem of identifying electroweak phase transitions strong enough for electroweak baryogenesis to be successful. We identify and discuss some pitfalls of this approach due to the modest hierarchy between mass scales of heavy degrees or freedom and the Higgs, and the possibility of dimensionful couplings violating the decoupling between light and heavy degrees of freedom.
We investigate neutrinoless double beta decay ($0 ubetabeta$) in the presence of sterile neutrinos with Majorana mass terms. These gauge-singlet fields are allowed to interact with Standard-Model (SM) fields via renormalizable Yukawa couplings as well as higher-dimensional gauge-invariant operators up to dimension seven in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory extended with sterile neutrinos. At the GeV scale, we use Chiral effective field theory involving sterile neutrinos to connect the operators at the level of quarks and gluons to hadronic interactions involving pions and nucleons. This allows us to derive an expression for $0 ubetabeta$ rates for various isotopes in terms of phase-space factors, hadronic low-energy constants, nuclear matrix elements, the neutrino masses, and the Wilson coefficients of higher-dimensional operators. The needed hadronic low-energy constants and nuclear matrix elements depend on the neutrino masses, for which we obtain interpolation formulae grounded in QCD and chiral perturbation theory that improve existing formulae that are only valid in a small regime of neutrino masses. The resulting framework can be used directly to assess the impact of $0 ubetabeta$ experiments on scenarios with light sterile neutrinos and should prove useful in global analyses of sterile-neutrino searches. We perform several phenomenological studies of $0 ubetabeta$ in the presence of sterile neutrinos with and without higher-dimensional operators. We find that non-standard interactions involving sterile neutrinos have a dramatic impact on $0 ubetabeta$ phenomenology, and next-generation experiments can probe such interactions up to scales of $mathcal O(100)$ TeV.
We present a practical three-step procedure of using the Standard Model effective field theory (SM EFT) to connect ultraviolet (UV) models of new physics with weak scale precision observables. With this procedure, one can interpret precision measurements as constraints on a given UV model. We give a detailed explanation for calculating the effective action up to one-loop order in a manifestly gauge covariant fashion. This covariant derivative expansion method dramatically simplifies the process of matching a UV model with the SM EFT, and also makes available a universal formalism that is easy to use for a variety of UV models. A few general aspects of RG running effects and choosing operator bases are discussed. Finally, we provide mapping results between the bosonic sector of the SM EFT and a complete set of precision electroweak and Higgs observables to which present and near future experiments are sensitive. Many results and tools which should prove useful to those wishing to use the SM EFT are detailed in several appendices.