Exotic μ--e- conversion in nuclei and R-parity violating supersymmetry

The flavor violating mu(-) - e(-) conversion in nuclei is studied within the minimal supersymmetric standard model, We focus on the R-parity violating contributions at tree level including the trilinear and the bilinear terms in the superpotential as well as in the soft supersymmetry breaking sector. The nucleon and nuclear structure have consistently been taken into account in the expression of the mu(-) - e(-) conversion branching ratio constructed in this framework. We have found that the contribution of the strange quark sea of the nucleon is comparable with that of the valence quarks. From the available experimental data on mu(-) - e(-) conversion in Ti-48 and Pb-208 and the expected sensitivity of the MECO experiment for Al-27 we have extracted new stringent limits on the R-parity violating parameters. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.