Hyperfine Splitting in Muonium: Accuracy of the Theoretical Prediction

Abstract

In the last twenty years, the theory of hyperfine splitting in muonium developed without any experimental input. Finally, this situation is changing and a new experiment on measuring hyperfine splitting in muonium is now in progress at J-PARC. The goal of the MuSEUM experiment is to improve by an order of magnitude experimental accuracy of the hyperfine splitting and muon-electron mass ratio. Uncertainty of the theoretical prediction for hyperfine splitting will be crucial for comparison between the forthcoming experimental data and the theory in search of a possible new physics. In the current literature estimates of the error bars of the theoretical prediction differ roughly by a factor of two. We explain the origin of this discrepancy and obtain the theoretical prediction for the muonium hyperfine splitting $\Delta \nu^{th}_{\scriptscriptstyle HFS}(Mu)=4~463~302~872~(515)~\mbox{Hz},\; \delta=1.2\times 10^{-7}$.