Search for lepton-flavor violation in different-flavor, high-mass final states in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

A search is performed for a heavy particle decaying into different-flavor, dilepton pairs ($e\mu$, $e\tau$ or $\mu\tau$), using 36.1 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV collected in 2015-2016 by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No excesses over the Standard Model predictions are observed. Bayesian lower limits at the 95% credibility level are placed on the mass of a $Z^{\prime}$ boson, the mass of a supersymmetric $\tau$-sneutrino, and on the threshold mass for quantum black-hole production. For the $Z^{\prime}$ and sneutrino models, upper cross-section limits are converted to upper limits on couplings, which are compared with similar limits from low-energy experiments and which are more stringent for the $e\tau$ and $\mu\tau$ modes