Speaker
Description
Charged lepton flavor violation refers to processes in which lepton family number is not conserved. Transitions among the $e$, $\mu$, and $\tau$ leptons without the emission of neutrinos --- not through the weak force –- would be unambiguous proof of a new force in nature outside the Standard Model. The discovery of the muon in 1937 immediately led to searching for the decay $\mu \rightarrow e \gamma$, hypothesizing that muon was an excited electron. The failure to find that transition ultimately led to the notion of two neutrinos. Muons are uniquely powerful tools in finding CLFV because we can make intense beams of muons. We have used three main modes in the search: the two decay modes$\mu \rightarrow e \gamma$, $\mu \rightarrow 3e$, and muon-electron conversion, $\mu^-N \rightarrow e^-N$. We discuss the status and prospects of experiments for all three of these modes at Fermilab, J-PARC, and PSI. We will briefly discuss two other transitions, $\mu^-N \rightarrow e^+N$ and muonium-antimuonium oscillations. We conclude with the long-term outlook for these searches.
