Purushottam Sahu (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)

Neutrinos, Lepton Number Violation and Hidden Sectors

We present an analysis of the lepton-number and lepton-flavour-violating process of muon-to-positron conversion \(\mu^-+N→e^++N'\), in the presence of an ultralight scalar dark matter (ULSDM) field which couples to neutrinos. The ULSDM contributes to the effective off-diagonal Majorana mass m_μe, therefore amplifying the rate of muon-to-positron conversion to experimentally observable levels. Using existing bounds from SINDRUM II, COMET, and Mu2e experiments, we derive novel constraints on the flavour-off-diagonal couplings of neutrinos to ULSDM. Our work reveals that upcoming experiments can provide stronger sensitivity to these new couplings than bounds arising from cosmological surveys and terrestrial experiments.