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SEMILEPTONIC LEPTON-NUMBER/FLAVOUR-VIOLATING tau DECAYS IN MAJORANA NEUTRINO MODELS

Motivated by the recent investigation of neutrinoless $τ$-lepton decays by the CLEO collaboration, we perform a systematic analysis of such decays in a possible new-physics scenario with heavy Dirac/Majorana neutrinos, including heavy-neutrino nondecoupling effects, finite quark masses, and quark as well as meson mixings. We find that $τ$-lepton decays into an electron or muon and a pseudoscalar or vector meson can have branching ratios close to the experimental sensitivity. Numerical estimates show that the predominant decay modes of this kind are $τ^-\to e^-ϕ$, $τ^-\to e^-ρ^0$, and $τ^-\to e^-π^0$, with branching ratios of order $10^{-6}$.