Electroweak Corrections to the True Muonium Hyperfine Splitting

Abstract

In contrast to other atomic systems, in true muonium ($\mu^+\mu^-$) the leading-order $Z$ boson corrections to the hyperfine splitting are shown to be experimentally accessible in the near future. This contribution ($-109$ MHz) constitutes a necessary contribution to a full $\mathcal{O}(m\alpha^7)$ calculation of the true muonium hyperfine splitting. This would enable a number of solutions to the muon problem to be constrained. Additionally, we compute the general expression for a pseudovector coupling to particle-antiparticle bound states at leading order, including the annihilation channel.