Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay and Lepton Flavor Violation

Abstract

We point out that extensions of the Standard Model with low scale (~TeV) lepton number violation (LNV) generally lead to a pattern of lepton flavor violation (LFV) experimentally distinguishable from the one implied by models with GUT scale LNV. As a consequence, muon LFV processes provide a powerful diagnostic tool to determine whether or not the effective neutrino mass can be deduced from the rate of neutrinoless double beta decay. We discuss the role of μ-> e γand μ-> e conversion in nuclei, which will be studied with high sensitivity in forthcoming experiments.

4 pages, 3 figures