Impact of indirect CP violation on Br$(K_S \to \mu^+\mu^-)_{\ell=0}$

Abstract

The decay $K_S \to (\mu^+\mu^-)_{\ell=0}$, with the final muon pair in an angular-momentum zero state, is a sensitive probe of short-distance physics. It has recently been shown how to extract this branching ratio from neutral kaon decay data. We point out that the impact of indirect CP violation on the standard-model prediction of this mode, while nominally of order $|\epsilon_K| \sim 10^{-3}$, is enhanced by a large amplitude ratio and leads to a shift of the branching ratio Br$(K_S \to \mu^+\mu^-)_{\ell=0}$ by a few percent, depending on the size of a relative phase that can be extracted from data. We also update the standard-model prediction of the short-distance contribution.