Neutrinos, lepton number violation, and hidden sectors

Abstract:

The speaker presents an analysis of the lepton-number and lepton-flavour-violating process of muon-to-positron conversion μ⁻+N→e⁺+N′, in the presence of an ultralight scalar dark matter (ULSDM) field which couples to neutrinos. The ULSDM contributes to the effective off-diagonal Majorana mass m_μe, therefore amplifying the rate of muon-to-positron conversion to experimentally observable levels. Using existing bounds from SINDRUM II, COMET, and Mu2e experiments, we derive novel constraints on the flavour-off-diagonal couplings of neutrinos to ULSDM. Our work reveals that upcoming experiments can provide stronger sensitivity to these new couplings than bounds arising from cosmological surveys and terrestrial experiments.