Probing Lepton Flavor Violation at the 13 TeV LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of the 13 TeV LHC to detect tau-mu lepton flavor violation through heavy scalar and pseudoscalar decays, extending current bounds beyond the 125 GeV Higgs boson.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of collider constraints on tau-mu LFV within the Type-III 2HDM, highlighting regions where heavy Higgs states offer better detection prospects.

Findings

Heavy neutral Higgs bosons can have large LFV branching ratios.

LHC at 13 TeV with 300 fb^{-1} can improve bounds on tau-mu LFV.

Certain parameter regions favor searches for heavy scalars over the 125 GeV Higgs.

Abstract

We investigate the bounds on tau-mu lepton flavor violation (LFV). Our main focus is on the collider constrains on tau-mu LFV. We use the Type-III Two-Higgs-Doublet-Model (2HDM) as a set up for our study. While the LFV branching fraction of the 125 GeV is well constrained by current LHC searches, the heavier neutral states could have a large branching fraction to tau and muon. We estimate the LHC reach for the 13 TeV center of mass energy with 300 $\text{fb}^{-1}$ luminosity for a neutral boson decaying into a tau and a muon. We identify parts of the LFV parameter space where the searches for heavy scalar and pseudoscalar decaying into a tau and a muon are more sensitive than the similar search for the 125 GeV boson.