A new measurement of the branching ratio, $R_{e/mu} =Gamma (pi^+ rightarrow mbox{e}^+ u + pi^+ rightarrow mbox{e}^+ u gamma)/ Gamma (pi^+ rightarrow mu^+ u + pi^+ rightarrow mu^+ u gamma)$, resulted in $R_{e/mu}^{exp} = (1.2344 pm 0.0023 (stat) pm 0.0019 (syst)) times 10^{-4}$. This is in agreement with the standard model prediction and improves the test of electron-muon universality to the level of 0.1 %.
The reaction pd->3He eta at threshold was used to provide a clean source of eta mesons for decay studies with the WASA detector at CELSIUS. The branching ratio of the decay eta->pi+pi-e+e- is measured to be (4.3+/-1.3+/-0.4)x10^-4.
The PEN Collaboration is conducting a new measurement of the pi+ -> e+ nu branching ratio at the Paul Scherrer Institute, with the goal uncertainty of delta B/B(pie2)=5E-4 or lower. At present, the combined accuracy of all published pie2 decay measurements lags behind the theoretical calculation by a factor of 40. In this contribution we report on the PEN detector configuration and its performance during two development runs done in 2007 and 2008.
Two results from the PIENU Experiment are presented reporting a test of lepton universality in pion decay and improved limits on heavy neutrinos coupling to positrons. The status of the full analysis for the $pi^+ rightarrow mbox{e}^+ u$ branching ratio measurement is summarized.
Using $pp$ collision data collected by LHCb at center-of-mass energies $sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV and 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3 fb$^{-1}$, the ratio of the branching fraction of the $B_c^+ rightarrow psi(2S)pi^+$ decay relative to that of the $B_c^+ rightarrow J/psipi^+$ decay is measured to be 0.268 $pm$ 0.032 (stat) $pm$ 0.007 (syst) $pm$ 0.006 (BF). The first uncertainty is statistical, the second is systematic, and the third is due to the uncertainties on the branching fractions of the $J/psi rightarrow mu^+mu^-$ and $psi(2S) rightarrow mu^+mu^-$ decays. This measurement is consistent with the previous LHCb result, and the statistical uncertainty is halved.
The branching ratio of the rare decay pi^0 -> e^+e^- has been measured in E799-II, a rare kaon decay experiment using the KTeV detector at Fermilab. The pi^0s were produced in fully-reconstructed K_L -> 3 pi^0 decays in flight. We observed 275 candidate pi^0 -> e^+e^- events, with an expected background of 21.4 +- 6.2 events which includes the contribution from Dalitz decays. We measured BR(pi^0 -> e^+e^-, x>0.95) = (6.09 +- 0.40 +- 0.24) times 10^{-8}, where the first error is statistical and the second systematic. This result is the first significant observation of the excess rate for this decay above the unitarity lower bound.