Muon capture rates from precision measurements of the muon disappearance

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method for measuring muon capture rates by directly observing muon disappearance, potentially increasing precision and reducing systematic errors in nuclear muon capture experiments.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel approach to determine muon capture rates through direct muon disappearance measurements, improving accuracy and enabling simultaneous measurements on various nuclei.

Findings

Measurement of muon disappearance can avoid pressure-dependent corrections.

Extrapolation to zero gas density yields the vacuum muon-proton capture rate with high precision.

Method applicable to different nuclei for comprehensive muon capture studies.

Abstract

In a typical experiment the nuclear \mu-capture rate is determined from measurements of the time constant of the muon decay exponential in a target. We propose a new approach for the evaluation of the \mu-capture rate, which is based on direct measurements of the \mu^- disappearance rate in the target. Considering, as an example, the reaction of \mu-capture on proton, we demonstrate that measurements of the \mu^- disappearance at different values of the hydrogen gas pressure in the target could be used to avoid a pressure-dependent correction and determine the "vacuum" \mu p -> \nu n reaction rate with accuracy better than 10^{-2} after extrapolation to zero gas density. The proposed method could be used to perform precision measurements of the \mu^- capture rate on different types of nuclei in one experiment.