THE CAPTURE AND DECAY INTERACTIONS OF NEGATIVE MUONS STOPPED IN MATTER (thesis)

Technical Report · Tue Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 1959

OSTI ID:4170771

Lipman, N H

The muon capture process ( mu /sup -/ + p yields n + nu ) is discussed. and an experiment is described in which muon capture rates were measured to accuracies of a few per cent for various target nuclei. The main interest of the experiment was to make a comparison between measured capture rates and the theoretically predicted capture rates of Tolhoek and Luyten. The theory is sensitive to the type of coupling that prevails in the muon capture process, and Tolhoek and Luyten have derived two values for the capture rate in each element considered, one for a Fermi type of coupling (pseudoscalar, scalar, and vector) and the other for Gamow-Teller coupling (axial vector and tensor). A comparison between experiment and theory over a range of selected elements should in principle detect whether the coupling is pure Fermi, pure Gamow-Teller, or a mixture of the two. The results, in fact. favor an excess of the Gamow-Teller over the Fermi type of coupling. The perturbation of the muon decay process ( mu /sup -/ yields e/sup -/ + nu + nu -bar) brought about by atomic binding is considered. A muon in orbit within a muonic atom may he expected to decay at a modified rate; this was investigated experimentally for negative muons stopped in aluminum and in copper. It is shown that there is no deviation from the free muon decay rate within the experimental standard deviation of 5%. (auth)

• Research Organization: Liverpool. Univ.
• NSA Number: NSA-14-014257
• OSTI ID: 4170771
• Report Number(s): NP-8597
• Country of Publication: Country unknown/Code not available
• Language: English

Related Subjects

ABSORPTION
ALUMINUM
ANTINEUTRINOS
ATOMIC MODELS
ATOMS
BETA DECAY
BINDING ENERGY
CAPTURE
COPPER
COUPLING
DECAY
ELECTRONS
ERRORS
INTERACTIONS
MEASURED VALUES
MUONS
MUONS-MINUS
NEUTRINOS
NEUTRONS
NUCLEI
ORBITS
PARTICLE MODELS
PHYSICS
PROTONS
TARGETS
VECTORS