Theoretical Overview: Motivations for Lepton Flavor Violation

Abstract

In the coming years, experiments underway will increase the sensitivity to charged lepton flavor violation by four orders of magnitude. These experiments will stringently probe weak scale physics. I review the status of global symmetries in the standard model and present several well-motivated models that predict observable lepton flavor violation. Finally, I describe what we might learn from future experimental results, whether positive or null.

Comments: 13 pages, references added. Invited talk presented at New Initiatives in Lepton Flavor Violation and Neutrino Oscillations, 2-6 October 2000, University of Hawaii, USA