Expanding the Landscape of Exotic Muon Decays

Abstract

We chart new-physics models that produce exotic, high-multiplicity muon decays featuring prompt or displaced $e^+e^-$ pairs and/or photons, with or without missing energy, such as $\mu \to 5e$, $\mu \to 7e$, etc. Starting from an effective-field-theory perspective, we estimate the reach on the ultraviolet scale and identify conditions under which lower-multiplicity modes are suppressed or occur at comparable rates. We then construct explicit realizations in minimal dark-sector models with light, feebly interacting particles, such as flavor-protected scalars, dark photons, inelastic dark matter, and axion-like particles. The predicted novel signatures can be probed at MEG II and Mu3e, as well as during calibration runs of COMET and Mu2e. A future discovery would provide valuable insights into short-distance dynamics and the mechanism of lepton-flavor symmetry breaking.