Polarization of the emitted neutron in muon capture

✍ Scribed by V Devanathan; R Parthasarathy; G Ramachandran

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1972
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 766 KB
• Volume: 72
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-4916
• DOI: 10.1016/0003-4916(72)90221-7

✦ Synopsis

The polarization of the emitted neutrons resulting from the capture of muons by complex nuclei is investigated and it is pointed out that this study provides valuable information which is difficult to obtain from any other source. Starting from the effective muon-capture interaction Hamiltonian of Fujii and Primakoff, the sum and average over lepton spins are performed. The resulting nuclear matrix elements are evaluated and expressed in terms of density matrix p defined in the spin space of the emitted neutron. Then the longitudinal polarization of the emitted neutron is given by Tr(o * fip)/Tr p, where fr is the unit vector denoting the direction of emitted neutron. The expression for polarization involves the neutrino direction and since a neutrino is not observed, an integration over its direction is performed. Numerical results are presented for *Va, %3 and 3i.