Direct Detection of Ultralight Dark Matter via Charged Lepton Flavor Violation
We propose a dark matter direct-detection strategy using charged particle decays at accelerator-based experiments. If ultralight $(m_ϕ\ll \text{eV})$ dark matter has a misalignment abundance, its local field oscillates in time at a frequency set by its mass. If it also couples to flavor-changing neutral currents, rare exotic decays such as $μ\to e ϕ'$ and $τ\to e(μ)ϕ'$ inherit this modulation. Focusing on such charged lepton flavor-violating decays, we show that sufficient event samples can enable detection of ultralight dark matter candidates at Mu3e, Belle-II, and FCC-ee.
Authors
- Jure Zupan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9445-537X)
- Innes Bigaran (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6883-953X)
- Roni Harnik (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7293-7175)
- Gordan Krnjaic (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7420-9577)
- Yann Gouttenoire (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2225-6704)
- Tony Menzo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2013-4570)
- Patrick J. Fox
Institutions
- Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (US)
- Tel Aviv University (IL)
- Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (DE)
- Northwestern University (PH)
- Proteogenomics Research Institute for Systems Medicine (US)
- Prisma (PE)
- Protéomique, Réponse Inflammatoire et Spectrométrie de Masse (FR)
Publication Details
- Journal
- ArXiv.org
- Published
- 2025-03-10
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2503.07722
- Primary Topic
- Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena
- Type
- article