1302.6398 (S. N. Gninenko)

Precision measurements of the muon capture rate on nuclei with a muon
disappearance experiment    [PDF]

S. N. Gninenko

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 technique 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 show that measurements of the \mu^- disappearance at different values of the hydrogen gas pressure in the target allow to determine the "vacuum" reaction rate with accuracy better than 10^{-2} after extrapolation to zero-density. The proposed method could be used to perform precision measurements of the \mu-capture rate on different types of nuclei in one experiment.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.6398