No Arabic abstract
We investigate the sensitivity of electron-proton ($ep$) colliders for charged lepton flavor violation (cLFV) in an effective theory approach, considering a general effective Lagrangian for the conversion of an electron into a muon or a tau via the effective coupling to a neutral gauge boson or a neutral scalar field. For the photon, the $Z$ boson and the Higgs particle of the Standard Model, we present the sensitivities of the LHeC for the coefficients of the effective operators, calculated from an analysis at the reconstructed level. As an example model where such flavor changing neutral current (FCNC) operators are generated at loop level, we consider the extension of the Standard Model by sterile neutrinos. We show that the LHeC could already probe the LFV conversion of an electron into a muon beyond the current experimental bounds, and could reach more than an order of magnitude higher sensitivity than the present limits for LFV conversion of an electron into a tau. We discuss that the high sensitivities are possible because the converted charged lepton is dominantly emitted in the backward direction, enabling an efficient separation of the signal from the background.
A weak singlet charged scalar exists in many new physics models beyond the Standard Model. The discovery potential of the singlet charged scalar is explored at future lepton colliders, e.g. the CEPC, ILC-350 and ILC-500. We demonstrate that one can discover the singlet charged scalar up to 118 GeV at the CEPC with an integrated luminosity of $5~mathrm{ab}^{-1}$. At the ILC-350 and the ILC-500 with an integrated luminosity of $1~mathrm{ab}^{-1}$ such a discovery limit can be further improved to 136 GeV and 160 GeV, respectively.
We present a comprehensive analysis of the potential sensitivity of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) to charged lepton flavor violation (CLFV) in the channel $epto tau X$, within the model-independent framework of the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT). We compute the relevant cross sections to leading order in QCD and electroweak corrections and perform simulations of signal and SM background events in various $tau$ decay channels, suggesting simple cuts to enhance the associated estimated efficiencies. To assess the discovery potential of the EIC in $tau$-$e$ transitions, we study the sensitivity of other probes of this physics across a broad range of energy scales, from $pp to e tau X$ at the Large Hadron Collider to decays of $B$ mesons and $tau$ leptons, such as $tau to e gamma$, $tau to e ell^+ ell^-$, and crucially the hadronic modes $tau to e Y$ with $Y in { pi, K, pi pi, K pi, ...}$. We find that electroweak dipole and four-fermion semi-leptonic operators involving light quarks are already strongly constrained by $tau$ decays, while operators involving the $c$ and $b$ quarks present more promising discovery potential for the EIC. An analysis of three models of leptoquarks confirms the expectations based on the SMEFT results. We also identify future directions needed to maximize the reach of the EIC in CLFV searches: these include an optimization of the $tau$ tagger in hadronic channels, an exploration of background suppression through tagging $b$ and $c$ jets in the final state, and a global fit by turning on all SMEFT couplings, which will likely reveal new discovery windows for the EIC.
We study charged lepton flavor violation associated with a light leptophilic axion-like particle (ALP), $X$, at the $B$-factory experiment Belle II. We focus on production of the ALP in the tau decays $tau to X l$ with $l=e,mu$, followed by its decay via $Xto l^- l^+$. The ALP can be either promptly decaying or long-lived. We perform Monte-Carlo simulations, recasting a prompt search at Belle for lepton-flavor-violating $tau$ decays, and propose a displaced-vertex (DV) search. For both types of searches, we derive the Belle~II sensitivity reaches in both the product of branching fractions and the ALP coupling constants, as functions of the ALP mass and lifetime. The results show that the DV search exceeds the sensitivity reach of the prompt search to the relevant branching fractions by up to about a factor of 40 in the long decay length regime.
Doubly-charged Higgs bosons ($Delta^{--}/Delta^{++}$) appear in several extensions to the Standard Model and can be relatively light. We review the theoretical motivation for these states and present a study of the discovery reach in future runs of the Fermilab Tevatron for pair-produced doubly-charged Higgs bosons decaying to like-sign lepton pairs. We also comment on the discovery potential at other future colliders.
While charged lepton flavor violation (cLFV) with taus is often expected to be largest in many extensions of the Standard Model (SM), it is currently much less constrained than cLFV with electrons and muons. We study the sensitivity of the LHeC to $e$-$tau$ (and $e$-$mu$) conversion processes $p e^- to tau^- + j$ (and $p e^- to mu^- + j$) mediated by a $Z$ with flavor-violating couplings to charged leptons in the $t$-channel. Compared to current tests at the LHC, where cLFV decays of the $Z$ (produced in the s-channel) are searched for, the LHeC has sensitivity to much higher $Z$ masses, up to O(10) TeV. For cLFV with taus, we find that the LHeC sensitivity from the process $p e^- to tau^- + j$ can exceed the current limits from collider and non-collider experiments in the whole considered $Z$ mass range (above $500$ GeV) by more than two orders of magnitude. In particular for extensions of the SM with a heavy $Z$, where direct production at colliders is kinematically suppressed, $e-tau$ conversion at LHeC provides an exciting new discovery channel for this type of new physics.