Main characteristics of muon capture in medium and heavy nuclei

Within the framework of the shell-optical model, a quantitative interpretation of the main characteristics of muon capture from the mesoatom 1s-shell in medium and heavy nuclei is given. The above characteristics are: the capture rate, the various strength functions, and the yield of direct and semidirect neutrons. The parameters of the model are fixed from independent data. The possibility of a substantial renormalization of the form factor of the induced pseudoscalar lepton-nucleon interaction is taken into account. The results of the calculations are compared with the prediction obtained within other theoretical approaches and with the corresponding experimental data. In particular, this comparison permits one to obtain a realistic estimate for the renormalization of the axial part of the lepton-nucleon interaction in nuclei. (orig.)