Search for Lepton-Flavor-Violating $τ$ Decays to a Lepton and an Invisible Boson at Belle II
hep-ex
/ Authors
Belle II Collaboration, I. Adachi, K. Adamczyk, L. Aggarwal, H. Ahmed, H. Aihara, N. Akopov, A. Aloisio, N. Anh Ky, D. M. Asner
and 391 more authors
T. Aushev, V. Aushev, H. Bae, S. Bahinipati, P. Bambade, Sw. Banerjee, J. Baudot, M. Bauer, A. Baur, A. Beaubien, J. Becker, P. K. Behera, J. V. Bennett, E. Bernieri, F. U. Bernlochner, V. Bertacchi, M. Bertemes, E. Bertholet, M. Bessner, S. Bettarini, B. Bhuyan, F. Bianchi, T. Bilka, S. Bilokin
/ Abstract
We search for lepton-flavor-violating $τ^-\to e^-α$ and $τ^-\toμ^-α$ decays, where $α$ is an invisible spin-0 boson. The search uses electron-positron collisions at $10.58$ GeV center-of-mass energy with an integrated luminosity of $62.8$ fb$^{-1}$, produced by the SuperKEKB collider and collected with the Belle II detector. We search for an excess in the lepton-energy spectrum of the known $τ^-\to e^-\barν_e ν_τ$ and $τ^-\to μ^-\barν_μν_τ$ decays. We report 95\% confidence-level upper limits on the branching-fraction ratio ${\mathcal B}(τ^-\to e^- α) / {\mathcal B}(τ^- \to e^- \barν_e ν_τ)$ in the range $(1.1-9.7) \times 10^{-3}$ and on ${\mathcal B}(τ^-\to μ^- α) / {\mathcal B}(τ^- \to μ^- \barν_μν_τ)$ in the range $(0.7-12.2) \times 10^{-3}$ for $α$ masses between 0 and 1.6 GeV/c$^2$. These results provide the most stringent bounds on invisible boson production from $τ$ decays.