Signature of heavy Majorana neutrinos at a linear collider: Enhanced charged Higgs pair production

Abstract

A charged Higgs pair can be produced at an ee collider through a t-channel exchange of a heavy neutrino (N) via e^+ e^- -> H^+ H^- and, if N is a Majorana particle, also via the lepton number violating (LNV) like-sign reaction e^\pm e^\pm \to H^\pm H^\pm. Assuming no a-priori relation between the effective eNH^+ coupling (ξ) and light neutrino masses, we show that this interaction vertex can give a striking enhancement to these charged Higgs pair production processes. In particular, the LNV H^-H^- signal can probe N at the ILC in the mass range 100 GeV < m_N < 10^4 TeV and with the effective mixing angle, ξ, in the range 10^{-4} < ξ^2 < 10^{-8} - well within its perturbative unitarity bound and the neutrinoless double beta decay (ββ_{0ν}) limit. The lepton number conserving (LNC) e^+ e^- \to H^+ H^- mode can be sensitive to, e.g., an O(10) TeV heavy Majorana neutrino at a 500 GeV International Linear Collider (ILC), if ξ^2 > 0.001.