English

Partial muon capture rates in $A=3$ and $A=6$ nuclei with chiral effective field theory

Nuclear Theory 2022-04-26 v2

Abstract

Searches for neutrinoless-double beta decay rates are crucial in addressing questions within fundamental symmetries and neutrino physics. The rates of these decays depend not only on unknown parameters associated with neutrinos, but also on nuclear properties. In order to reliably extract information about the neutrino, one needs an accurate treatment of the complex many-body dynamics of the nucleus. Neutrinoless-double beta decays take place at momentum transfers on the order of 100 MeV/cc and require both nuclear electroweak vector and axial current matrix elements. Muon capture, a process in the same momentum transfer regime, has readily available experimental data to validate these currents. In this work, we present results of {\it ab initio} calculations of partial muon capture rates for 3^3He and 6^6Li nuclei using variational and Green's Function Monte Carlo computational methods. We estimate the impact of the three-nucleon interactions, the cutoffs used to regularize two-nucleon (2N2N) interactions, and the energy range of 2N2N scattering data used to fit these interactions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2111.11360,
  title  = {Partial muon capture rates in $A=3$ and $A=6$ nuclei with chiral effective field theory},
  author = {G. B. King and S. Pastore and M. Piarulli and R. Schiavilla},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.11360},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

10 pages, 5 figures including supplemental material; Re-analyzed GFMC $^3$He muon capture with updated wave functions, conclusions unchanged