Published September 4, 2003 | Version v1
Journal article

Right-handed electrons in radiative muon decay

Creators

Description

Electrons emitted in the radiative decay μ-→e-ν-bareνμγ have a significant probability of being right-handed, even in the limit me→0. Such 'wrong-helicity' electrons, arising from helicity-flip bremsstrahlung, contribute an amount ((α)/(4π))Γ0 to the muon decay width (Γ0≡GF2mμ5/(192π3)). We use the helicity-flip splitting function Dhf(z) of Falk and Sehgal [Phys. Lett. B 325 (1994) 509] to obtain the spectrum of the right-handed electrons and the photons that accompany them. For a minimum photon energy Eγ=10 MeV (20 MeV), approximately 4% (7%) of electrons in radiative μ-decay are right-handed

Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1016/j.physletb.2003.07.016;
arXiv
arXiv:hep-ph/0306166v2;
PII
S0370269303010360;

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physics Letters. Section B
Journal Volume
569
Journal Issue
1-2
Journal Page Range
p. 25-29
ISSN
0370-2693
CODEN
PYLBAJ

Optional Information

Copyright
Copyright (c) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved.