Innes Bigaran (Northwestern)

10:30am Thursday Dec 12, 2024
Geoff Opat Seminar Room

Tau physics as a portal for discovery

As the heaviest SM lepton, lepton flavor violating (LFV) decays of the tau parallel the flavor transitions probed by neutrino oscillation experiments. Therefore, the era of precision neutrino physics will be complemented by advances in our understanding of charged-tau lepton physics. The future of tau physics has real potential to unveil the secrets of the lepton sector. In this talk, I will discuss a selection of promising avenues for SM and BSM physics studies of the tau. Firstly, I will demonstrate how an understanding of rare SM tau interactions at the DUNE near detector can improve our understanding of the synergy between neutrino and charged-lepton physics. Secondly, I will describe how in the presence of ultralight Dark Matter, a LFV decay of the tau can provide a natural probe for the wave-like nature of such a classical background and utilized for Dark Matter direct detection.