Direct Detection of Ultralight Dark Matter via Charged Lepton Flavor Violation

Abstract

We propose a dark matter direct-detection strategy using charged particle decays at accelerator-based experiments. If ultralight $(m_ϕ\ll \text{eV})$ dark matter has a misalignment abundance, its local field oscillates in time at a frequency set by its mass. If it also couples to flavor-changing neutral currents, rare exotic decays such as $μ\to e ϕ'$ and $τ\to e(μ)ϕ'$ inherit this modulation. Focusing on such charged lepton flavor-violating decays, we show that sufficient event samples can enable detection of ultralight dark matter candidates at Mu3e, Belle-II, and FCC-ee.