High energy spectrum of internal positrons from radiative muon capture on nuclei

Ryan Plestid, Richard J. Hill

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

The Mu2e and COMET collaborations will search for nucleus-catalyzed muon conversion to positrons (μ-→e+) as a signal of lepton number violation. A key background for this search is radiative muon capture where either (1) a real photon converts to an e+e- pair "externally"in surrounding material, or (2) a virtual photon mediates the production of an e+e- pair "internally."If the e+ has an energy approaching the signal region then it can serve as an irreducible background. In this work we describe how the near end point internal positron spectrum can be related to the real photon spectrum from the same nucleus, which encodes all nontrivial nuclear physics.

Original languageEnglish
Article number033002
JournalPhysical Review D
Volume103
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 15 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Funding

We are indebted to Robert Bernstein, Michael Mackenzie, Pavel Murat, and Stefano Di Falco for their consistent availability, enthusiasm, and willingness to help us understand the details and needs of the Mu2e experiment. We especially thank Pavel Murat for emphasizing the importance of the internal positron spectrum and for the existing gap in the literature surrounding its near end point behavior. This work was made possible by the Intensity Frontier Fellowship program which supported R. P.’s visit to Fermilab. R. P. is extremely grateful for the support and hospitality of the Fermilab theory group. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, under Award No. DE-SC0019095. This manuscript has been authored by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics.

FundersFunder number
Fermi Research Alliance, LLCDE-AC02-07CH11359
Michigan State University-U.S. Department of Energy (MSU-DOE) Plant Research Laboratory
Office of Science Programs
Institute for High Energy PhysicsDE-SC0019095

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

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