Limits on Lepton Flavor Violation from μ-e-conversion

Marcela Gonzalez, Thomas Gutsche, Juan Carlos Helo, Sergey Kovalenko, Valery E. Lyubovitskij, Ivan Schmidt

Published 2013-03-04, updated 2013-03-24Version 2

We revisit the status of Lepton Flavor Violating (LFV) \mu e qq contact interactions from the view point of \mu - e -conversion in nuclei. We consider their contribution to this LFV process via the two mechanisms on the hadronic level: direct nucleon and meson exchange ones. In the former case the quarks are embedded directly into the nucleons while in the latter in mesons which then interact with nucleons in a nucleus. We revise and in some cases reevaluate the hadronic parameters relevant for both mechanisms and calculate the contribution of the above mentioned contact interactions in coherent \mu - e -conversion in various nuclei. Then we update the existing upper bounds and also derive new ones for the scales of the \mu e qq contact interactions from the experimental limits on the capture rates of \mu - e -conversion. We compare these limits with the ones derived in the literature from other LFV processes and comment on the prospects of LHC searches related to the contact \mu e qq interactions.