Isospin Violation in tau -> 3 pi nu_tau

Abstract

Isospin violating signals in the tau -> 3 pi nu_tau decay mode are discussed. For the tau -> pi^- pi^- pi^+ nu_tau decay mode, isospin violation arises from the vector current contribution in the tau -> omega pi nu_tau decay with the subsequent isospin violating omega decay into pi^+ pi^-. We demonstrate that such effects may be observed in presently available data through the measurement of the interference effects of these vector current contributions with the dominating axial vector current, i.e. through a measurement of the structure functions W_F,W_G,W_H and W_I. In the case of the tau -> pi^0 pi^0 pi^- nu_tau decay mode, a vector current contribution is generated by eta pi mixing in the decay chain tau -> eta rho nu_tau -> pi^0 pi^0 pi^- nu_tau. We find that this effect is rather small, the magnitude of the associated interference terms being too low for present statistics.