European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields (Sep 2020)

Search for lepton flavour violating muon decay mediated by a new light particle in the MEG experiment

  • A. M. Baldini,
  • F. Berg,
  • M. Biasotti,
  • G. Boca,
  • P. W. Cattaneo,
  • G. Cavoto,
  • F. Cei,
  • M. Chiappini,
  • G. Chiarello,
  • C. Chiri,
  • A. Corvaglia,
  • A. de Bari,
  • M. De Gerone,
  • M. Francesconi,
  • L. Galli,
  • F. Gatti,
  • F. Grancagnolo,
  • M. Grassi,
  • D. N. Grigoriev,
  • M. Hildebrandt,
  • Z. Hodge,
  • K. Ieki,
  • F. Ignatov,
  • R. Iwai,
  • T. Iwamoto,
  • S. Kobayashi,
  • P.-R. Kettle,
  • W. Kyle,
  • N. Khomutov,
  • A. Kolesnikov,
  • N. Kravchuk,
  • N. Kuchinskiy,
  • T. Libeiro,
  • G. M. A. Lim,
  • V. Malyshev,
  • N. Matsuzawa,
  • M. Meucci,
  • S. Mihara,
  • W. Molzon,
  • Toshinori Mori,
  • A. Mtchedilishvili,
  • M. Nakao,
  • H. Natori,
  • D. Nicolò,
  • H. Nishiguchi,
  • M. Nishimura,
  • S. Ogawa,
  • R. Onda,
  • W. Ootani,
  • A. Oya,
  • D. Palo,
  • M. Panareo,
  • A. Papa,
  • V. Pettinacci,
  • G. Pizzigoni,
  • A. Popov,
  • F. Renga,
  • S. Ritt,
  • A. Rozhdestvensky,
  • M. Rossella,
  • R. Sawada,
  • P. Schwendimann,
  • G. Signorelli,
  • A. Stoykov,
  • G. F. Tassielli,
  • K. Toyoda,
  • Y. Uchiyama,
  • M. Usami,
  • C. Voena,
  • K. Yanai,
  • Yu. V. Yudin

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-8364-1
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 80, no. 9
pp. 1 – 21

Abstract

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Abstract We present the first direct search for lepton flavour violating muon decay mediated by a new light particle X, $$\upmu ^+ \rightarrow \mathrm {e}^+\mathrm {X}, \mathrm {X} \rightarrow \upgamma \upgamma \ $$ μ + → e + X , X → γ γ . This search uses a dataset resulting from $$7.5\times 10^{14}$$ 7.5 × 10 14 stopped muons collected by the MEG experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institut in the period 2009–2013. No significant excess is found in the mass region 20–45 MeV/c $$^2$$ 2 for lifetimes below 40 ps, and we set the most stringent branching ratio upper limits in the mass region of 20–40 MeV/c $$^2$$ 2 , down to $${\mathcal {O}}(10^{-11})$$ O ( 10 - 11 ) at 90% confidence level.