Non-universal gauge bosons Z′ and lepton flavor-violating tau decays

There are many models beyond the standard model predicting the existence of non-universal gauge bosons Z', which can give rise to very rich phenomena. We calculate the contributions of the non-universal gauge bosons Z', predicted by topcolor-assisted technicolor (TC2) models and flavor-universal TC2 models, to the lepton flavor-violating tau decays tau --> l, y and tau --> l(i)l(j)l(k). We find that the branching ratio B-r(tau --> l(i)l(j)l(k)) is larger than that of the process tau --> l, gamma in all of the parameter space. Over a sizable region of the parameter space, we have B-r(tau - l(i)l(j)l(k)) similar to 10(-8). which may be detected in the future experiments. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.