Lepton Flavor Violating Decays - Review & Outlook

TL;DR

This review discusses the current experimental efforts and future prospects for detecting lepton flavor violation in charged leptons, which is a clear indicator of physics beyond the Standard Model, through rare decay searches.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of experimental searches for LFV in charged leptons, highlighting recent efforts and future experimental prospects beyond prior reviews.

Findings

Active searches in tau decays at B factories

Upcoming MEG experiment for mu to e gamma

Potential LFV searches at LHC and high-energy muon experiments

Abstract

Here I review the status and prospects of experimental investigations into lepton flavor violation (LFV) in charged leptons. Rare LFV processes are naturally expected to occur through loops of TeV scale particles predicted by supersymmetric theories or other models beyond the Standard Model. In contrast to physics of quark flavors that is dominated by the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix, LFV in charged leptons is a definitive signal of new physics. Currently active researches are rare tau decay searches at the B factories. The MEG experiment will soon start a sensitive search for the LFV muon decay, mu to e gamma. Prospects for searches at the LHC, a possibility of a fixed target LFV experiment with high energy muons, and a sensitivity of leptonic kaon decays to LFV are also briefly discussed.