Probing lepton flavour violation via neutrinoless τ → 3μ decays with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

This article presents the sensitivity of the ATLAS experiment to the lepton-flavour-violating decays of τ→3μ. A method utilising the production of τ leptons via W→τν decays is used. This method is applied to the sample of 20.3 fb⁻¹ of pp collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV collected by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC in 2012. No event is observed passing the selection criteria, and the observed (expected) upper limit on the τ lepton branching fraction into three muons, Br(τ→3μ), is 3.76×10⁻⁷ (3.94×10⁻⁷) at 90 % confidence level.