Majorana Neutrino Searches at the LHCb Experiment

The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics is one of the most successful theories in physics which describes the fundamental interactions between elementary particles. Half of the leptons in the SM are neutrinos. The observation of neutrino oscillations is evidence for lepton flavour violation (forbidden in the SM) and implies that neutrinos have non-zero mass, but their nature is still unknown. Neutrinos can be their own anti-particles, in that case they are called “Majorana” neutrinos or Dirac particles, with particles and antiparticles being different objects [1]. Lepton number/flavour violating decays of B and D mesons are forbidden in the Standard Model (SM), but could occur through the production of a Majorana neutrino. The observation of such decay would be a clear sign of new physics.