Lepton Flavor Violation Induced by a Neutral Scalar at Future Lepton Colliders

Abstract

Many new physics scenarios beyond the Standard Model often necessitate the existence of a (light) neutral scalar $H$, which might couple to the charged leptons in a flavor violating way, while evading all existing constraints. We show that such scalars could be effectively produced at future lepton colliders, either on-shell or off-shell depending on their mass, and induce lepton flavor violating (LFV) signals, i.e. $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to {\ell }_{\alpha }^{\pm }{\ell }_{\beta }^{\mp }(+H)$ with $\alpha \ne \beta$. We find that a large parameter space of the scalar mass and the LFV couplings can be probed, well beyond the current low-energy constraints in the lepton sector. In particular, a scalar-loop induced explanation of the longstanding muon $g-2$ anomaly can be directly tested in the on-shell mode.

Comments: 7 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables, minor changes, version to appear in PRL