Erlangen 2026 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 69: Methods in Particle Physics IV

T 69.4: Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2026, 17:00–17:15, KH 00.020

Reconstruction of Heavy Neutral Lepton decaying into lepton + ρ in SHiP — •Harshivraj Jatinbhai Oza for the SHiP-SBT collaboration — Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

As part of the ongoing search for physics beyond the standard model, CERN has recently approved a new general-purpose beam dump experiment at SPS: SHiP (Search for Hidden Particles). SHiP aims to explore the intensity frontier by searching for feebly interacting particles in the GeV mass regime. Among several well-motivated candidates, the experiment is optimized for the discovery of Heavy Neutral Leptons (HNLs), hypothetical particles that could explain neutrino masses and mixing, provide a mechanism for baryogenesis, and potentially contribute to the dark-matter sector.

This talk presents the mass reconstruction strategy for the HNL decaying into a lepton + ρ (–> ππ⁰), without explicitly reconstructing the π⁰ exploiting the mass constraint (P_π + P_π⁰)² = m_ρ². Furthermore we explore the feasibility of taking advantage of the Surrounding Background Tagger (SBT) to identify photons from the π⁰ decay as a means of improving the signal reconstruction and background suppression.

Keywords: Heavy neutral lepton; SHiP; BSM; Kinematic reconstruction method; CERN