  We investigated mu+ decays at rest produced at the ISIS beam stop target.
Lepton flavor (LF) conservation has been tested by searching for \nueb via the
detection reaction p(\nueb,e+)n. No \nueb signal from LF violating mu+ decays
was identified. We extract upper limits of the branching ratio for the LF
violating decay mu+ -> e+ \nueb \nu compared to the Standard Model (SM) mu+ ->
e+ nue numub decay: BR < 0.9(1.7)x10^{-3} (90%CL) depending on the spectral
distribution of \nueb characterized by the Michel parameter rho=0.75 (0.0).
These results improve earlier limits by one order of magnitude and restrict
extensions of the SM in which \nueb emission from mu+ decay is allowed with
considerable strength. The decay \mupdeb as source for the \nueb signal
observed in the LSND experiment can be excluded.

High Energy Physics - Experiment