STI Publications - View Publication Form #16192

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Publication Information
Title $\tau \to \mu\mu\mu$ at a rate of one out of $10^{14}$ tau decays?
Abstract We present in a full analytic form the partial widths for the lepton flavour violating decays $\mu^\pm \to e^\pm e^+ e^-$ and $\tau^\pm \to \ell^\pm \ell'^{+} \ell'^{-}$, with $\ell,\ell'=\mu,e$, mediated by neutrino oscillations in the one-loop diagrams. Compared to the first result by Petkov in~\cite{Petcov:1976ff}, obtained in the zero momentum limit $\mathcal{P}\ll m_{\nu} \ll M_W$, we retain full dependence on $\mathcal{P}$, the momenta and masses of external particles, and we determine the branching ratios in the physical limit $m_\nu \ll \mathcal{P} \ll M_W$. We show that the claim in~\cite{Pham:1998fq} that the $\tau \to \ell \ell' \ell'$ branching ratios could be as large as $10^{-14}$, as a consequence of keeping the $\mathcal{P}$ dependence, is flawed. We find rates of order $10^{-55}$, even smaller than those obtained in the zero momentum limit, as the latter prediction contains an unphysical logarithmic enhancement.
Author(s) Patrick Blackstone, Matteo Fael, Emilie Passemar
Publication Date June 2020
Document Type Journal Article
Primary Institution Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Newport News
Affiliation Theory & Comp Physics / THEORY CENTER / THEORY CENTER
Funding Source Nuclear Physics (NP), National Science Foundation
Proprietary? No
This publication conveys Technical Science Results
Document Numbers
JLAB Number: JLAB-THY-19-3123 OSTI Number: 1633983
LANL Number: arXiv:1912.09862 Other Number: DOE/OR/23177-4868
Associated with an experiment No
Associated with EIC No
Supported by Jefferson Lab LDRD Funding No
Journal Article
Journal Name European Physical Journal C
Refereed Yes
Volume 80
Issue 6
Page(s) 506
Attachments/Datasets/DOI Link
Document(s)
tauCLFV.pdf (STI Document)
DOI Link
Dataset(s) (none)
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