Deuteron properties from muonic atom spectroscopy

Abstract

Leading order ($\alpha^4$) finite size corrections in muonic deuterium are evaluated within a few body formalism for the $\mu^- p n$ system in muonic deuterium and found to be sensitive to the input of the deuteron wave function. We show that this sensitivity, taken along with the precise deuteron charge radius determined from muonic atom spectroscopy can be used to determine the elusive deuteron D-state probability, $P_D$, for a given model of the nucleon-nucleon (NN) potential. The radius calculated with a $P_D$ of 4.3\% in the chiral NN models and about 5.7\% in the high precision NN potentials is favoured most by the $\mu^-d$ data.