Tau-Mu Flavor Violation and the Scale of New Physics

Abstract

Motivated by the strong experimental evidence of large nu_mu - nu_tau neutrino oscillations, we study existing constraints for related mu - tau flavor violation. Using a general bottom-up approach, we construct dimension-6 effective fermionic operators whose coefficients encode the scale of new physics associated with mu - tau flavor violation, which is a piece in the puzzle of the origin of neutrino oscillations. We survey existing experimental bounds on this scale, which arise mostly from tau and B decays. In many cases the new physics scale is constrained to be above a few TeV. We also discuss the operators which are either weakly constrained or, at present, subject to no experimental bounds.

Proceedings for MRST 2003, Joe Schechter Fest, Syracuse University, New York, May 2003. 8 pages, 2 figures