Gauge and Infrared Properties of Hadronic Structure of Nucleon in Neutron Beta Decay to Order O(\alpha/\pi) in Standard V - A Effective Theory with QED and Linear Sigma Model of Strong Low--Energy Interactions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the gauge and infrared properties of hadronic structure in neutron beta decay within a combined V-A, QED, and linear sigma model framework, revealing issues with gauge invariance and renormalizability at order O().

Contribution

It demonstrates that radiative corrections involving hadronic structure are gauge non-invariant and unrenormalisable, highlighting fundamental limitations of the effective theory approach.

Findings

Gauge non-invariance of radiative corrections induced by hadronic structure.

Infrared divergences cancel in neutron lifetime calculations.

Virtual photon exchange contributions are unrenormalisable.

Abstract

Within the standard V - A theory of weak interactions, Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) and the linear sigma-model (LsM) of strong low-energy hadronic interactions we analyse gauge and infrared properties of hadronic structure of the neutron and proton in the neutron beta decay to leading order in the large nucleon mass expansion. We show that the complete set of Feynman diagrams describing radiative corrections of order O(\alpha/\pi), induced by hadronic structure of the nucleon, to the rate of the neutron beta decay is gauge non-invariant and unrenormalisable. We show that a gauge non-invariant contribution does not depend on the electron energy in agreement with Sirlin's analysis of contributions of strong low-energy interactions (Phys. Rev. 164, 1767 (1967)). We show that infrared divergent and dependent on the electron energy contributions from the neutron radiative beta decay and neutron beta decay, caused by hadronic structure of the nucleon, are cancelled in the neutron lifetime. Nevertheless, we find that divergent contributions of virtual photon exchanges to the neutron lifetime, induced by hadronic structure of the nucleon, are unrenormalisable even formally. Such an unrenormalizability can be explained by the fact that the effective V - A vertex of hadron-lepton current-current interactions is not a vertex of the combined quantum field theory including QED and LsM, which are renormalizable theories.