μτ production at hadron colliders

Abstract

Motivated by large νμ−ντ flavor mixing, we consider μτ production at hadron colliders via dimension-6 effective operators, which can be attributed to new physics in the flavor sector at a higher scale Λ. Current bounds on many of these operators from low energy experiments are very weak or nonexistent, and they may lead to clean μ+τ− and μ−τ+ signals at hadron colliders. At the Tevatron with 8 fb−1, one can exceed current bounds for most operators, with most 2σ sensitivities being in the 6 − 24 TeV range. We find that at the LHC with 1 fb−1 (100 fb−1) integrated luminosity, one can reach a 2σ sensitivity for Λ ∼ 3−10 TeV (Λ ∼ 6−21 TeV), depending on the Lorentz structure of the operator. For some operators, an improvement of several orders of magnitude in sensitivity can be obtained with only a few tens of pb−1 at the LHC.