Hadron collider tests of neutrino mass-generating mechanism

The Standard Model of particle physics (SM) is presently the best description of nature at small distances and high energies. However, with tiny but nonzero neutrino masses, a Higgs boson mass unstable under radiative corrections, and little guidance on understanding the hierarchy of fermion masses, the SM remains an unsatisfactory description of nature. Well-motivated scenarios that resolve these issues exist but also predict extended gauge (e.g., Left-Right Symmetric Models), scalar (e.g., Supersymmetry), and/or fermion sectors (e.g., Seesaw Models). Hence, discovering such new states would have far-reaching implications.;After reviewing basic tenets of the SM and collider physics, several beyond the SM (BSM) scenarios that alleviate these shortcomings are investigated. Emphasis is placed on the production of a heavy Majorana neutrinos at hadron colliders in the context of low-energy, effective theories that simultaneously explain the origin of neutrino masses and their smallness compared to other elementary fermions, the so-called Seesaw Mechanisms. As probes of new physics, rare top quark decays to Higgs bosons in the context of the SM, the Types I and II Two Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM), and the semi-model independent framework of Effective Field Theory (EFT) have also been investigated. Observation prospects and discovery potentials of these models at current and future collider experiments are quantified.