Search for type-III seesaw heavy leptons in pp collisions at s =8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

A search for the pair production of heavy leptons (N0,L±) predicted by the type-III seesaw theory formulated to explain the origin of small neutrino masses is presented. The decay channels N0→W±l (=e,μ,τ) and L±→W±ν (ν=νe,νμ,ντ) are considered. The analysis is performed using the final state that contains two leptons (electrons or muons), two jets from a hadronically decaying W boson and large missing transverse momentum. The data used in the measurement correspond to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb-1 of pp collisions at s=8 TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. No evidence of heavy lepton pair production is observed. Heavy leptons with masses below 325-540 GeV are excluded at the 95% confidence level, depending on the theoretical scenario considered. © 2015 CERN. © 2015 CERN, for the ATLAS Collaboration. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the »http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/» Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.