Doubly-Charged Scalars in the Type-II Seesaw Mechanism: Fundamental Symmetry Tests and High-Energy Searches

Abstract

We analyze the sensitivity of low-energy fundamental symmetry tests to interactions mediated by doubly-charged scalars that arise in type-II seesaw models of neutrino mass and their left-right symmetric extensions. We focus on the next generation measurement of the parity-violating asymmetry in M{\o}ller scattering planned by the MOLLER collaboration at Jefferson Laboratory. We compare the MOLLER sensitivity to that of searches for charged lepton flavor violation (CLFV) and neutrinoless double beta-decay ($0\nu\beta\beta$-decay) as well as present and possible future high-energy collider probes. We show that for the simplest type-II seesaw scenario, CLFV searches have the greatest sensitivity. However, in a left-right symmetric extension where the scale of parity-breaking is decoupled from the $SU(2)_R$-breaking scale, the MOLLER experiment will provide a unique probe of scalar triplet interactions in the right-handed sector for a doubly-charged scalar mass up to $\sim$ 10 TeV and help elucidate the mechanism of $0\nu\beta\beta$-decay.