ALP production in Lepton Flavour Violating meson, tau and gauge boson decays

Abstract

In this paper we study axion-like particles (ALPs) with lepton-flavour-violating (LFV) couplings in the mass regime above the muon threshold, $m_a>m_\mu$, where the strong bound from the exotic muon decay $\mu\to ea$ no longer apply and the decay channel $a\to e\mu$ becomes kinematically accessible. In this region, the ALP typically decays promptly, motivating new search strategies based on its production in decays involving virtual muons. We analyse charged-meson and $W$ decays, neutral-current processes such as $Z$ and quarkonium decays, and, when couplings to the third generation are present, LFV $\tau$ decays. The subsequent decay $a\to e\mu$ leads to striking LFV signatures with negligible Standard Model backgrounds. Combining these production modes with current low-energy constraints, we assess the sensitivity of future high-energy $e^+e^-$ colliders, flavour factories such as Belle II and STCF, fixed-target experiments such as NA62, and proton beam-dump facilities such as SHiP. Overall, our results identify LFV ALP production in meson, gauge-boson, quarkonium and $\tau$ decays (with displaced vertices) as a promising and largely unexplored avenue to test ALP interactions with charged leptons above the muon mass threshold.