Search for a Non-Relativistic Boson in Two-Body Antimuon Decay

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential to detect a hypothetical neutral boson in rare muon decay, setting new limits on its existence and proposing future detection improvements.

Contribution

It demonstrates the feasibility of probing for a neutral boson in muon decay and establishes new branching ratio limits near the kinematic boundary.

Findings

Branching ratio limit of $ extless{}10^{-5}$ for the decay.

Comparable or better sensitivity than previous searches.

Proposed future improvements with germanium detectors.

Abstract

We demonstrate the feasibility of probing the charged lepton flavor violating decay $\mu^{+}\!\!\rightarrow \!e^{+} X^{0}$ for the presence of a slow-moving neutral boson $X^{0}$ capable of undergoing gravitational binding to large structures, and as such able to participate in some cosmological scenarios. A short exposure to surface antimuons from beamline M20 at TRIUMF generates a branching ratio limit of $\lesssim 10^{-5}$. This is comparable or better than previous searches for this channel, although in a thus-far unexplored region of $X^{0}$ phase space very close to the kinematic limit of the decay. The future improved sensitivity of the method using a customized p-type point contact germanium detector is described.