Sensitivity Study of Searching for $\tau^- \to \gamma \mu^-$ at HIEPA

TL;DR

This study evaluates the potential sensitivity of the HIEPA experiment to detect the lepton flavor violating decay $ au^- o \gamma \mu^-$, estimating the required luminosity to improve current limits.

Contribution

It provides a sensitivity analysis for $ au^- o \gamma \\mu^-$ at HIEPA, including luminosity estimates to reach current and future upper limits.

Findings

6.34 ab$^{-1}$ needed to match current best limit

2510 ab$^{-1}$ required for a $10^{-9}$ sensitivity

Sensitivity depends on integrated luminosity and detector design

Abstract

The charged lepton flavor violation process is a clean and sensitive probe of new physics beyond the Standard Model. A sensitivity study is performed to the process $\tau^- \to \gamma \mu^-$ based on a 3~fb$^{-1}$ inclusive Monte Carlo sample of $e^+e^-$ collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 4.26 or 4.6~GeV, in the framework of the BESIII software system. The 90\% confidence level upper limits on $\BR(\tau^- \to \gamma \mu^-)$ are estimated assuming no signal is produced. We also obtain the sensitivity on $\BR(\tau^- \to \gamma \mu^-)$ as a function of the integrated luminosity, to serve as a reference for the HIEPA being proposed in China. It is found that 6.34~ab$^{-1}$ are needed to reach the current best upper limit of $4.4\times 10^{-8}$ and about 2510~ab$^{-1}$ are needed to reach a sensitivity of $10^{-9}$ if the detector design is similar to that of BESIII.