While all models of Majorana neutrino masses lead to the same dimension five effective operator, which does not conserve lepton number, the dimension six operators induced at low energies conserve lepton number and differ depending on the high energy model of new physics. We derive the low-energy dimension six operators which are characteristic of generic Seesaw models, in which neutrino masses result from the exchange of heavy fields which may be either fermionic singlets, fermionic triplets or scalar triplets. The resulting operators may lead to effects observable in the near future, if the coefficients of the dimension five and six operators are decoupled along a certain pattern, which turns out to be common to all models. The phenomenological consequences are explored as well, including their contributions to µ → eγ and new bounds on the Yukawa couplings for each model.

We perform a systematic study of the d = 5 Weinberg operator at the one-loop level. We identify three different categories of neutrino mass generation: (1) finite irreducible diagrams; (2) finite extensions of the usual seesaw mechanisms at one-loop and (3) divergent loop realizations of the seesaws. All radiative one-loop neutrino mass models must fall into one of these classes. Case (1) gives the leading contribution to neutrino mass naturally and a classic example of this class is the Zee model. We demonstrate that in order to prevent that a tree level contribution dominates in case (2), Majorana fermions running in the loop and an additional Z 2 symmetry are needed for a genuinely leading one-loop contribution. In the type-II loop extensions, the Yukawa coupling will be generated at one loop, whereas the type-I/III extensions can be interpreted as loop-induced inverse or linear seesaw mechanisms. For the divergent diagrams in category (3), the tree level contribution cannot be avoided and is in fact needed as counter term to absorb the divergence.

We discuss the systematic decomposition of the dimension nine neutrinoless double beta decay operator, focusing on mechanisms with potentially small contributions to neutrino mass, while being accessible at the LHC. We first provide a (d = 9 tree-level) complete list of diagrams for neutrinoless double beta decay. From this list one can easily recover all previously discussed contributions to the neutrinoless double beta decay process, such as the celebrated mass mechanism or "exotics", such as contributions from left-right symmetric models, R-parity violating supersymmetry and leptoquarks. More interestingly, however, we identify a number of new possibilities which have not been discussed in the literature previously. Contact to earlier works based on a general Lorentz-invariant parametrisation of the neutrinoless double beta decay rate is made, which allows, in principle, to derive limits on all possible contributions. We furthermore discuss possible signals at the LHC for mediators leading to the short-range part of the amplitude with one specific example. The study of such contributions would gain particular importance if there were a tension between different measurements of neutrino mass such as coming from neutrinoless double beta decay and cosmology or single beta decay.

We discuss the generation of small neutrino masses from effective operators higher than dimension five, which open new possibilities for low scale see-saw mechanisms. In order to forbid the radiative generation of neutrino mass by lower dimensional operators, extra fields are required, which are charged under a new symmetry. We discuss this mechanism in the framework of a two Higgs doublet model. We demonstrate that the tree level generation of neutrino mass from higher dimensional operators often leads to inverse see-saw scenarios in which small lepton number violating terms are naturally suppressed by the new physics scale. Furthermore, we systematically discuss tree level generalizations of the standard see-saw scenarios from higher dimensional operators. Finally, we point out that higher dimensional operators can also be generated at the loop level. In this case, we obtain the TeV scale as new physics scale even with order one couplings. a

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We discuss the impact and potential discovery of physics beyond the standard model, coupling to the Higgs sector, at the LHC. Using a model-independent effective Lagrangian approach, pure Higgs and Higgs-gauge operators are analyzed, and their origin in terms of tree-level exchange of unknown heavy messengers is systematically derived. It is demonstrated that early signals at the LHC may result from a simultaneous modification of Higgs-fermion and Higgs-gauge boson couplings induced by those operators, pointing towards singlet scalar or a triplet vector—barring fine-tuned options. Of course, the Higgs discovery itself will also be affected by such new couplings. With increasing statistics, the remaining options can be discriminated from each other. On the other hand, the discovery of a new scalar doublet may require technology beyond the LHC, since the Higgs self-couplings have to be measured. Our conclusions are based on the complete set of tree-level decompositions of the effective operators unbiased by a specific modelM. B. Gavela acknowledges CICYT support through the project FPA-2009 09017 and CAM support through the project HEPHACOS, P-ESP-00346. W. Winter acknowledges support by the Emmy Noether program of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Contract No. WI 2639/ 2-

We discuss the implementation of the "minimal" type III seesaw model, i.e. with one fermionic triplet, in FeynRules/MadGraph. This is the first step in order to realize a real study of LHC data recorded in the LHC detectors. With this goal in mind, we comment on the possibility of discovering this kind of new physics at the LHC running at 7 TeV with a luminosity of few fb −1 .

We discuss the prospects of studying lepton number violating processes in order to identify Majorana neutrinos from low scale seesaw mechanisms at lepton-proton colliders. In particular, we consider the scenarios of colliding electrons with LHC energy protons and, motivated by the efforts towards the construction of a muon collider, the prospects of muon-proton collisions. We find that present constraints on the mixing of the Majorana neutrinos still allow for a detectable signal at these kind of facilities given the smallness of the Standard Model background. We discuss possible cuts in order to further increase the signal over background ratio and the prospects of reconstructing the neutrino mass from the kinematics of the final state particles.