Analysis of ordinary and radiative muon capture in liquid hydrogen

Abstract

A simultaneous analysis is made of the measured rates of ordinary muon capture (OMC) and radiative muon capture (RMC) in liquid hydrogen, using theoretical estimates for the relevant atomic capture rates that have been obtained in chiral perturbation theory with the use of the most recent values of the coupling constants. We reexamine the basic formulas for relating the atomic OMC and RMC rates to the liquid-hydrogen OMC and RMC rates, respectively. Although the analysis is significantly influenced by ambiguity in the molecular state population, we can demonstrate that, while the OMC data can be reproduced, the RMC data can be explained only with unrealistic values of the coupling constants; the degree of difficulty becomes even more severe when we try to explain the OMC and RMC data simultaneously.