Measuring two photon exchange in elastic nuclear scattering with $e^+/e^-$ charge asymmetries

Abstract

Measurements of nuclear $\beta$-decay are commonly used to extract elements of the quark-mixing Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix. The precision of these measurements is currently limited by theoretical uncertainties in electroweak radiative corrections (EWRC) arising from so-called box diagrams, which involve the exchange of two gauge bosons. Two photon exchange (TPE) is the most experimentally accessible of such processes, making it a natural choice for providing constraints on the theoretical frameworks used for calculating EWRC. The cross section asymmetry between elastic $e^+/e^-$ scattering is directly sensitive to this, as the TPE contribution to the cross section has opposite sign for electrons and positrons. While charge asymmetry measurements have been performed on proton targets, no such data exists for nuclear targets. Proposed here is a measurement of the $e^+/e^-$ charge asymmetry on various nuclei relevant to $\beta$-decay measurements used for CKM matrix extraction. Determining the size of TPE through these processes can provide important constraints on EWRC.