Search for lepton flavor violating reactions with high energy muons

A deep inerastic scattering process mu N -> tau X is discussed to study lepton flavor violation between muons and tau leptons. In supersymmetric models, the Higgs boson mediated diagrams could be important for this reaction. We find that at a muon energy (E-mu) higher than 50 GeV, the predicted cross section significantly increases due to the contribution from sea b-quarks. The number of produced tau leptons can be O(10(4)) at E-mu = 300 GeV from 10(20) muons, whereas O(10(2)) events are given at E-mu = 50 GeV. Another promising possibility to search for the eN -> tau X reaction at an electron-positron linear collider is also discussed. Searches for these reactions would be competitive with studies of rare tau decays and have potential to improve sensitivities to lepton flavor violation significantly.