Muon Capture in Deuterium

P. Ricci, E. Truhlik, B. Mosconi, J. Smejkal

Published 2009-12-10, updated 2010-04-12Version 3

Model dependence of the capture rates of the negative muon capture in deuterium is studied starting from potential models and the weak two-body meson exchange currents constructed in the tree approximation and also from an effective field theory. The tree one-boson exchange currents are derived from the hard pion chiral Lagrangians of the $N \Delta \pi \rho \omega a_1$ system. If constructed in conjunction with the one-boson exchange potentials, the capture rates can be calculated consistently. On the other hand, the effective field theory currents, constructed within the heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory, contain a low energy constant $\hat d ^R$ that cannot be extracted from data at the one-particle level nor determined from the first principles. Comparative analysis of the results for the doublet transition rate allows us to extract the constant $\hat d ^R$.