Search for Lepton Flavor Violating Decays ${\tau }^{\pm }\to {\ell }^{\pm }{\pi }^0$, ${\ell }^{\pm }\eta$, ${\ell }^{\pm }{\eta }^{\prime }$

A search for lepton flavor violating decays of the $\tau$ lepton to a lighter mass lepton and a pseudoscalar meson has been performed using $339{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ of $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ annihilation data collected at a center-of-mass energy near 10.58 GeV by the BABAR detector at the SLAC PEP-II storage ring. No evidence of a signal has been found, and upper limits on the branching fractions are set at the ${10}^{-7}$ level.

Figure 1

Selected data (dots) and 68% of signal MC events (shaded region) inside the GSB region, and the $\pm 2\sigma$ signal box.

Figure 2

Excluded regions in $\tan \beta$ vs $m_A$ plane (see text).