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 vs = 13 TeV pp collision data collected by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider is reported. The N is produced via W ?N mu 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 < m(N) < 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.