Sterile neutrinos at MAPP in the $$B-L$$ model

The possibility of searching for right-handed neutrinos at the MoEDAL’s Apparatus for Penetrating Particles (MAPP) detector is investigated in this work. In particular, pair-production of right-handed (RH) neutrinos N from either a $$B-L$$ B - L gauge boson $$Z'$$ Z ′ , as well as a Standard Model (SM) Z boson are considered. Under a no-background assumption, we show that the MAPP detector can be sensitive to active-sterile neutrino mixing strengths as low as Vμ N² ≈ 10⁻¹² V μ N 2 ≈ 10 - 12 for multiple choices of mN / mZ' m N / m Z ′ values, when taking the $$B-L$$ B - L gauge coupling gB-L = 10⁻³ g B - L = 10 - 3 near its current limit. The SM Z boson portal can reach a similar sensitivity, when the effective mixing between the $$B-L$$ B - L and SM gauge boson is α ≈ 0.002 α ≈ 0.002 .