Neutrinoless Double-β Decay with Nonstandard Majoron Emission
Abstract
We present a novel mode of neutrinoless double beta decay with emission of a light Majoron-like scalar particle phi. We assume it couples via an effective seven-dimensional operator with a (V+A) lepton current and (V+-A) quark currents leading to a long-range contribution that is unsuppressed by the light neutrino mass. We calculate the total double beta decay rate and determine the fully differential shape for this mode. We find that future double beta decay searches are sensitive to scales of the order LambdaNP ~ 1 TeV for the effective operator and a light scalar mphi < 0.2 MeV, based on ordinary double beta decay Majoron searches. The angular and energy distributions can deviate considerably from that of two-neutrino double beta decay, which is the main background. We point out possible ultraviolet completions where such an effective operator can emerge.
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