What is Leading Order for LFV in SMEFT?

TL;DR

This paper investigates the leading order contributions to lepton flavor violation within the SMEFT framework, assessing the relevance of higher-dimensional operators and loop effects for future high-scale NP searches.

Contribution

It introduces a power-counting scheme to evaluate the importance of dimension eight operators and two-loop effects in LFV within SMEFT, extending beyond the usual dimension six analysis.

Findings

LFV observables are sensitive to certain dimension eight operators.

Two-loop anomalous dimensions can be relevant for NP scales below 20-100 TeV.

Simplifying assumptions in RGEs can affect the interpretation of LFV constraints.

Abstract

Upcoming searches for lepton flavour change (LFV) aim to probe New Physics(NP) scales up to $ \sim 10^4$ TeV, implying that they will be sensitive to NP at lower scales that is suppressed by loops or small couplings. We suppose that the NP responsable for LFV is beyond the reach of the LHC and can be parametrised in Effective Field Theory, introduce a small power-counting parameter \`a la Cabibbo-Wolfenstein, and assess whether the existing dimension six operator basis and one-loop RGEs provide a good approximation for LFV. We find that mu to e flavour-changing observables can be sensitive to a few dozen dimension eight operators, and to some effects of two-loop anomalous dimensions, for NP scales below 20-100 TeV. We also explore the effect of some simplifying assumptions in the one-loop RGEs, such as neglecting flavour-changing effects.