Muon decay in orbit: spectrum of high-energy electrons

Abstract

Experimental searches for lepton-flavor-violating coherent muon-to-electron conversion in the field of a nucleus, have been proposed to reach the unprecedented sensitivity of 10^(-16) - 10^(-18) per stopped muon. At that level, they probe new interactions at effective-mass scales well beyond 1000 TeV. However, they must contend with background from ordinary bound muon decay. To better understand the background-spectrum shape and rate, we have carried out a detailed analysis of Coulombic-bound-state muon decay, including nuclear recoil. Implications for future experiments are briefly discussed.

11 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.D. v2: One sentence modified to avoid possible misunderstandings. Journal version

References in corpus (1)

• Decay of negative muons bound in ${}^{27}$Al

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• Searching for new physics at $\mu \to e$ facilities with ${\mu }^{+}$ and ${\pi }^{+}$ decays at rest
• Isotope dependence of muon decay in orbit
• Distinctive nuclear signatures of low-energy atmospheric neutrinos
• Uncertainty quantification for $\mu \to e$ conversion in nuclei: charge distributions
• Distinguishing charged lepton flavor violation scenarios with inelastic $\mu \to e$ conversion
• Using Machine Learning to Select High-Quality Measurements
• A New Determination of the (Z,A) Dependence of Coherent Muon-to-Electron Conversion
• Measurements of the charge ratio and polarization of cosmic-ray muons with the Super-Kamiokande detector
• Comprehensive table of calculated Huff factors
• Muon to positron conversion