A leptoquark resolution to flavor and ANITA anomalies

Abstract

The ANITA experiment has seen anomalous Earth emergent showers of EeV energies which cannot be explained with Standard Model interactions. On the other hand, collider tests of lepton flavor universality have shown significant deviations from theoretical predictions as well. It is known that, among single leptoquark solutions, only the chiral vector leptoquark U1?(3,1,2/3) can simultaneously address the discrepancies in R(D(?)) and R(K(?)). In this paper, we show that the leptoquark motivated by flavor anomalies coupled to a sterile neutrino can also explain the ANITA Anomalous Events. We consider two scenarios, (a) the sterile neutrino, produced via resonant leptoquark mediated neutrino-nucleon interactions, propagates through the Earth without significant attenuation and decays near the surface to a ? lepton; and (b) a cosmogenic sterile neutrino interacts with the matter near the surface of Earth and generates a ? lepton. The parameter space and required flux are investigated.