Flavour-violating charged lepton decays in seesaw-type models

Analytic expressions of lepton-flavour- and lepton-number-violating decays of charged leptons are derived in the context of general SU(2)_L ⊗ U(1)_Y seesaw scenarios that are motivated by grand unified theories (GUT's) or superstring models, in which left-handed and/or right-handed neutral singlets are present. Possible constraints imposed by cosmology and low-energy data are briefly discussed. The violation of the decoupling theorem in flavour-dependent graphs due to the presence of heavy neutral leptons of Dirac or Majorana nature is emphasized. Numerical estimates reveal that the decays τ⁻ → e⁻ e⁻ e⁺or τ⁻ → e⁻ μ⁻ μ⁺ can be as large as ∼ 10⁻⁶, which may be observed in LEP experiments or other τ factories.