Lepton Flavor Violating Photoleptonic Effect

TL;DR

This paper investigates hypothetical lepton flavor violating photoelectric effects involving muons and taus, estimating their cross sections and event rates constrained by current experimental bounds on related decays.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework to estimate cross sections for lepton flavor violating photoelectric processes based on existing decay bounds.

Findings

Upper limits on cross sections for $\gamma e o \mu$ and $\gamma e o au$ processes.

Estimated event rates constrained by current experimental decay bounds.

Provides a basis for future experimental searches for lepton flavor violation.

Abstract

We study lepton flavor violating analogs of the photoelectric effect, with a final $\mu$ or $\tau$ instead of an electron: $\gamma e\to \mu$ and $\gamma e\to \tau$. On the basis of the general parametrization of the matrix element of the electromagnetic current we estimate the upper limits for the cross sections and event rates of these processes, imposed by the current experimental bounds on $\mu\to e \gamma$ and $\tau\to e \gamma$ decays.