/ 98 05 01 4 v 1 1 4 M ay 1 99 8 Results from recent searches for muonium – antimuonium conversion and future perspectives

A positive muon (µ +) and an electron (e −) form the the hydrogen-like muonium atom (M =µ + e −). Since it consists of two leptonic particles which are according to present knowledge point-like, accurate calculations of its level energies can be performed in the framework of standard theory. In particular, the theoretical description of this system is possible almost exclusively by Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) which has been verified in various very high precision experiments [1]. Due to the close confinement of the bound state the muonium atom renders in addition the possibility for sensitive searches for electron–muon interactions not included in the standard model. Such exotic processes could affect the energy of the quantum states at a level of the same order of magnitude as the precision achievable in modern spectroscopic experiments. Oscillations between muonium and antimuonium (M =µ − e +) would violate separate additive lepton number conservation which is a purely empirical law. Whereas in the hadronic sector quark mixings are well known (K 0 –K 0 oscillations are a familiar example), they have not been observed for lep-tons, yet. M –M-oscillations are not provided in the standard model, however , they are allowed in many extensions to it which try to explain further some of its features like, e.g. parity violation or the spectrum of elementary particle masses. In many of these speculative models the coupling constant G MM in an effective four fermion interaction could be as high as the present upper limit established in an experiment at LAMPF in Los Alamos, USA,