Search for the lepton-flavour violating decays $B^+ \to K^+ {\mu}^{\pm} e^{\mp}$

Abstract

A search for the lepton-flavour violating decays $B^+ \to K^+ {\mu}^{\pm} e^{\mp}$ is performed using a sample of proton-proton collision data, collected with the LHCb experiment at centre-of-mass energies of $7$ and $8~{\rm TeV}$ and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3$\rm~fb^{-1}$. No significant signal is observed, and upper limits on the branching fractions are set as $\mathcal{B}(B^+ \to K^+ {\mu}^- e^+) < 7.0~(9.5) \times 10^{-9}$ and $\mathcal{B}(B^+ \to K^+ {\mu}^+ e^-) < 6.4~(8.8) \times 10^{-9}$ at 90 (95) % confidence level. The results improve the current best limits on these decays by more than one order of magnitude.