Search for the charged lepton flavor violating decay $η\to e^{\pm}μ^{\mp}$

Abstract

Based on $(10.087 \pm 0.044) \times 10^{9}~J/ψ$ events collected at the center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s} = 3.097$~GeV with the BESIII detector, we search for the charged lepton flavor violating decay $η\to e^{\pm}μ^{\mp}$ through the process $J/ψ\to γη'$ with $η' \to π^{+} π^{-} η$. No signal is observed, and an upper limit on the branching fraction is determined to be $\mathcal{B}(η\to e^{\pm}μ^{\mp}) < 6.8 \times 10^{-7}$ at the 90\% confidence level. This result improves the previous best limit by one order of magnitude.

10 pages, 3 figures