Bolton, Patrick Douglas John;
(2021)
Exotic Neutrino Interactions as a Probe of Physics Beyond the Standard Model.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This thesis examines the unique window neutrinos provide to physics beyond the Standard Model. Unlike the other fermions of the Standard Model, the question remains as to why the neutrinos are so light and whether they are Dirac or Majorana fermions. If there is some mechanism generating the small neutrino masses that is related to New Physics (NP) at a high energy scale (or weakly-coupled physics at a low energy scale), measuring the properties of the neutrinos such as their interactions is crucial to constrain such models. It is then important to survey the range of experiments probing neutrinos and to gauge their ability to constrain NP. This thesis takes both an agnostic approach to the identity of NP by considering effective neutrino interactions as well as a model-specific approach. Several topics are considered, firstly the ability of neutrino oscillation experiments to constrain effective lepton number violating (|∆L| = 2) neutrino non-standard interactions (NSIs) if the far detector is sensitive to the charge of the outgoing lepton. This novel probe is contrasted to neutrinoless double beta decay and other |∆L| = 2 processes. Close attention is also given to the theoretical description of neutrino oscillations in the quantum field theory picture and how this can be extended to include neutrino NSIs. A similar study examines the novel ability of atomic spectroscopy experiments to probe long-range forces mediated by neutrinos interacting via effective interactions. An explicit model explored in detail is the so-called inverse seesaw mechanism. A characteristic prediction of this model is the presence of two heavy sterile neutrinos with a small mass splitting, the consequences of which are examined for a range of experiments. We compare these to constraints derived from neutrinoless and two neutrino double beta decay.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Exotic Neutrino Interactions as a Probe of Physics Beyond the Standard Model |
| Event: | UCL |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2021. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| Keywords: | Neutrinos, Beyond the Standard Model |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10137534 |
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