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Title: Looking forward to lepton-flavor-violating ALPs

Abstract

We assess the status of past and future experiments on lepton flavor violating (LFV) muon and tau decays into a light, invisible, axion-like particle (ALP), a. We propose a new experimental setup for MEG II, the MEGII-fwd, with a forward calorimeter placed downstream from the muon stopping target. Searching for μ → ea decays MEGII-fwd is maximally sensitive to LFV ALPs, if these have nonzero couplings to right-handed leptons. The experimental set-up suppresses the (left-handed) Standard Model background in the forward direction by controlling the polarization purity of the muon beam. The reach of MEGII-fwd is compared with the present constraints, the reach of Mu3e and the Belle-II reach from τ → ℓa decays. We show that a dedicated experimental campaign for LFV muon decays into ALPs at MEG II and Mu3e will be able to probe the ALP parameter space in an unexplored region well beyond the existing astrophysical constraints. We study the implications of these searches for representative LFV ALP models, where the presence of a light ALP is motivated by neutrino masses, the strong CP problem and/or the SM flavor puzzle. To this extent we discuss the majoron in low-scale seesaw setups and introduce the LFV QCDmore » axion, the LFV axiflavon and the leptonic familon, paying particular attention to the cases where the LFV ALPs constitute cold dark matter.« less

Authors:
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4]
  1. Nankai Univ., Tianjin (China). School of Physics
  2. Univ. of Florence (Italy). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy; INFN Sezione di Firenze, Florence (Italy); European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva (Switzerland). Theory Division
  3. Karlsruhe Inst. of Technology (KIT) (Germany). Inst. for Theoretical Particle Physics
  4. Univ. of Cincinnati, OH (United States). Dept. of Physics
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Univ. of Cincinnati, OH (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
OSTI Identifier:
1851546
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1869459
Grant/Contract Number:  
SC0011784
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: Journal of High Energy Physics (Online); Journal Volume: 2021; Journal Issue: 9; Journal ID: ISSN 1029-8479
Publisher:
Springer Nature
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS; physics; beyond standard model; effective field theories; cosmology of theories beyond the SM

Citation Formats

Calibbi, Lorenzo, Redigolo, Diego, Ziegler, Robert, and Zupan, Jure. Looking forward to lepton-flavor-violating ALPs. United States: N. p., 2021. Web. doi:10.1007/jhep09(2021)173.
Calibbi, Lorenzo, Redigolo, Diego, Ziegler, Robert, & Zupan, Jure. Looking forward to lepton-flavor-violating ALPs. United States. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep09(2021)173
Calibbi, Lorenzo, Redigolo, Diego, Ziegler, Robert, and Zupan, Jure. Mon . "Looking forward to lepton-flavor-violating ALPs". United States. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep09(2021)173. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1851546.
@article{osti_1851546,
title = {Looking forward to lepton-flavor-violating ALPs},
author = {Calibbi, Lorenzo and Redigolo, Diego and Ziegler, Robert and Zupan, Jure},
abstractNote = {We assess the status of past and future experiments on lepton flavor violating (LFV) muon and tau decays into a light, invisible, axion-like particle (ALP), a. We propose a new experimental setup for MEG II, the MEGII-fwd, with a forward calorimeter placed downstream from the muon stopping target. Searching for μ → ea decays MEGII-fwd is maximally sensitive to LFV ALPs, if these have nonzero couplings to right-handed leptons. The experimental set-up suppresses the (left-handed) Standard Model background in the forward direction by controlling the polarization purity of the muon beam. The reach of MEGII-fwd is compared with the present constraints, the reach of Mu3e and the Belle-II reach from τ → ℓa decays. We show that a dedicated experimental campaign for LFV muon decays into ALPs at MEG II and Mu3e will be able to probe the ALP parameter space in an unexplored region well beyond the existing astrophysical constraints. We study the implications of these searches for representative LFV ALP models, where the presence of a light ALP is motivated by neutrino masses, the strong CP problem and/or the SM flavor puzzle. To this extent we discuss the majoron in low-scale seesaw setups and introduce the LFV QCD axion, the LFV axiflavon and the leptonic familon, paying particular attention to the cases where the LFV ALPs constitute cold dark matter.},
doi = {10.1007/jhep09(2021)173},
journal = {Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)},
number = 9,
volume = 2021,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Sep 27 00:00:00 EDT 2021},
month = {Mon Sep 27 00:00:00 EDT 2021}
}

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