Probing Lepton Flavor Violation in Meson Decays with LHC Data

Abstract

In this letter, we use LHC data from the Drell-Yan processes $pp\to {\ell }_i{\ell }_j$ (with $i\ne j$) to derive model-independent upper limits on lepton-flavor-violating meson decays. Our analysis is based on an Effective Field Theory (EFT) approach and it does not require a specific assumption regarding the basis of effective operators. We find that current LHC data (140~${\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$) already provides competitive limits on $B(B\to \pi e\tau )$ and $B(B\to \pi \mu \tau )$ with respect to the ones obtained through experimental searches at the $B$-factories. Moreover, we derive upper limits on several decays that have not been searched for experimentally yet, such as $D^0\to e\tau$ in the charm sector, and various semileptonic decays such as $B\to \rho \mu \tau$, $B_s\to K\mu \tau$ and $B_s\to \varphi \mu \tau$. Lastly, we discuss the validity of the EFT description of LHC data and the impact of loop corrections in our analysis.

Comments: 11 pages, 2 tables, 4 figs; typos corrected, published in EPJC