Electroweak Radiative Corrections to Muon Capture

Abstract

Electroweak radiative corrections to muon capture on nuclei are computed and found to be sizable. They enhance the capture rates for hydrogen and helium by 2.8% and 3.0% respectively. As a result, the value of the induced pseudoscalar coupling, g_P^exp, extracted from a recent hydrogen 1S singlet capture experiment is increased by about 21% to g_P^exp = 7.3 +/- 1.2 and brought into good agreement with the prediction of chiral perturbation theory, g_P^theory=8.2 +/- 0.2. Implications for helium capture rate predictions are also discussed.