Search for lepton flavour violating muon decay mediated by a new light particle in the MEG experiment

We present the first direct search for lepton flavour violating muon decay mediated by a new light particle X, μ+→e+X,X→γγ. This search uses a dataset resulting from 7.5 × 10 14 stopped muons collected by the MEG experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institut in the period 2009–2013. No significant excess is found in the mass region 20–45 MeV/c2 for lifetimes below 40 ps, and we set the most stringent branching ratio upper limits in the mass region of 20–40 MeV/c2, down to O(10 - 11) at 90% confidence level.