Search for heavy Majorana or Dirac neutrinos and right-handed $W$ gauge bosons in final states with charged leptons and jets in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector
A search for heavy right-handed Majorana or Dirac neutrinos N R and heavy right-handed gauge bosons W R is performed in events with energetic electrons or muons, with the same or opposite electric charge, and energetic jets. The search is carried out separately for topologies of clearly separated final-state products (“resolved” channel) and topologies with boosted final states with hadronic and/or leptonic products partially overlapping and reconstructed as a large-radius jet (“boosted” channel). The events are selected from pp collision data at the LHC with an integrated luminosity of 139 fb -1 collected by the ATLAS detector at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV. No significant deviations from the Standard Model predictions are observed. The results are interpreted within the theoretical framework of a left-right symmetric model, and lower limits are set on masses in the heavy right handed W R boson and N R plane. The excluded region extends to about m(W R ) = 6.4 TeV for both Majorana and Dirac N R neutrinos at m(N R ) < 1 TeV. N R with masses of less than 3.5 (3.6) TeV are excluded in the electron (muon) channel at m(W R ) = 4.8 TeV for the Majorana neutrinos, and lim its of m(N R ) up to 3.6 TeV for m(W R ) = 5.2 (5.0) TeV in the electron (muon) channel are set for the Dirac neutrinos. These constitute the most stringent exclusion limits to date for the model considered.