Tree-level unitarity constraints on heavy neutral leptons

Abstract: Heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) can explain the origin of neutrino masses and oscillations over a wide range of masses. Direct experimental probes of HNLs become unfeasible for masses significantly above the electroweak scale.Consequently, the strongest limits arise from the non-observation of charged lepton flavor-violating processes induced by HNLs at loop level.Counter-intuitively, these bounds tighten as the HNL mass increases, an effect that persists within the perturbative regime. This work explores the precise form of these bounds for HNLs with masses well beyond the electroweak scale by analyzing the full matrix of partial waves (tree-level unitarity). At high energies, the HNL model simplifies to a Yukawa theory, allowing unitarity constraints to be expressed in terms of the total Yukawa coupling $\left|Y_{\mathrm{tot}}\right|^2$ involving HNLs, lepton doublets, and the Higgs boson. Processes with $J=0$ and $J=1/2$ yield the well-known result $\left|Y_{\mathrm{tot}}\right|^2 \leq 8\pi$. However, the most stringent result arises from processes with $J = 1$, which is given by $\left|Y_{\mathrm{tot}}\right|^2 \leq 4\pi(\sqrt{5} -1) = 8\pi/\varphi \approx 15.533$, where $\varphi$ is the Golden ratio. These results remain valid provided that the Yukawa matrix has rank 1, a condition approximately satisfied in models with two or three HNLs, with large mixing angles, and radiactively small neutrino masses. Finally, we determine the maximum mass that an HNL can have in the type-I seesaw model while remaining the sole source of neutrino masses.