Testing the see-saw mechanism at collider energies

We propose a low energy extension of the Standard Model consisting of an additional gauged U(1)(B-L) plus three right-handed neutrinos. Although the lightest right-handed neutrinos have TeV scale masses and may be produced at colliders via their couplings to the Z(B-L) gauge boson, constraints from the out-of-equilibrium condition lead to stringent upper bounds on the right-handed neutrino production cross-sections at colliders. However we find that the mass of the Z(B-L) gauge boson may be sufficiently light to be discovered at collider energies, providing an indirect test of the see-saw mechanism. We propose a brane-world scenario which motivates such TeV mass right-handed neutrinos. Our analysis opens up the possibility that the mechanism responsible for neutrino mass is testable at colliders such as the LHC or VLHC.