Search for Charged Lepton Flavor Violation in $J/\psi$ decays at BESIII

TL;DR

This paper reports the most stringent search to date for charged lepton flavor violation in $J/$ decays at BESIII, setting new upper limits that improve previous results by two orders of magnitude.

Contribution

First search for CLFV in $J/\psi$ decays at BESIII, providing the most stringent upper limits in heavy quarkonium system to date.

Findings

Upper limit for $J/\psi\to e\tau$ decay is $7.5\times10^{-8}$.

Upper limit for $J/\psi\to e\mu$ decay is $4.5\times10^{-9}$.

Results improve previous limits by two orders of magnitude.

Abstract

The observation of any charged lepton flavor violation (CLFV) process would be a clear signal of new physics beyond the Standard Model. Various decay modes, including lepton ($\mu, \tau$) decays, pseudoscalar meson ($K,\pi$) decays, vector meson ($\phi, J/\psi, \Upsilon$) decays, and Higgs decays, have been explored to detect CLFV. Focusing on the search for CLFV at the $\tau$-charm region, the results of the search for $J/\psi\to e\tau / e\mu$ using the 10 billion $J/\psi$ events collected by the BESIII experiment are presented. The upper limits (ULs) at the 90$\%$ confidence level are $\mathcal{B}(J/\psi\to e^\pm\tau^\mp)<7.5\times10^{-8}$ and $\mathcal{B}(J/\psi\to e^\pm\mu^\mp)<4.5\times10^{-9}$, respectively. Improving the previously published limits by two orders of magnitudes, the results are the most stringent CLFV searches in heavy quarkonium system.