Search for Heavy Sterile Neutrinos in Trileptons at the LHC

Understand

We present a search strategy for both Dirac and Majorana sterile neutrinos from the purely leptonic decays of $W^\pm \to e^\pm e^\pm \mu^\mp \nu$ and $\mu^\pm \mu^\pm e^\mp \nu$ at the 14 TeV LHC.

• The discovery and exclusion limits for sterile neutrinos are shown using both the Cut-and-Count (CC) and Multi-Variate Analysis (MVA) methods.
• We also discriminate between Dirac and Majorana sterile neutrinos by exploiting a set of kinematic observables which differ between the Dirac and Majorana cases.
• We find that the MVA method, compared to the more common CC method, can greatly enhance the discovery and discrimination limits.