Search for Heavy Neutral Leptons in Decays of W Bosons Using a Dilepton Displaced Vertex in sqrt(s) = 13 TeV pp Collisions with the ATLAS Detector

A search for a long-lived, heavy neutral lepton (N) in 139 fb−1 of sqrt(s) = 13 TeV pp collision data collected by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider is reported. The N is produced via W→Nμ or W→Ne and decays into two charged leptons and a neutrino, forming a displaced vertex. The N mass is used to discriminate between signal and background. No signal is observed, and limits are set on the squared mixing parameters of the N with the left-handed neutrino states for the N mass range 3 GeV<15 GeV. For the first time, limits are given for both single-flavor and multiflavor mixing scenarios motivated by neutrino flavor oscillation results for both the normal and inverted neutrino-mass hierarchies.