Neutrinoless Double-β Decay with Nonstandard Majoron Emission

Abstract

We present a novel mode of neutrinoless double-β decay with emission of a light Majoron-like scalar particle φ. We assume it couples via an effective seven-dimensional operator with a (V+A) lepton current and (V±A) quark currents leading to a long-range contribution that is unsuppressed by the light neutrino mass. We calculate the total double-β decay rate and determine the fully differential shape for this mode. We find that future double-β decay searches are sensitive to scales of the order ΛNP≈1 TeV for the effective operator and a light scalar mφ<0.2 MeV, based on ordinary double-β decay Majoron searches. The angular and energy distributions can deviate considerably from that of two-neutrino double-β decay, which is the main background. We point out possible ultraviolet completions where such an effective operator can emerge.