A NEW PROBE OF LEPTON FLAVOR VIOLATION

We study lepton flavour violation via flavour changing Rutherford scat tering, i.e. the conversion of relativistic electrons into muons by sc attering in the external field of a massive nucleus. We show that for a class of models with heavy neutrinos and extended gauge sectors, all the unknown form-factors associated with purely electromagnetic trans itions may be absorbed into the predicted value of Gamma(mu-->e gamma) , leading to a compact analytical expression for the cross-section. Th e experimental realisation via a beam-dump experiment at LEP is discus sed.