The quenching of the axial-vector coupling constant $g_A$ in $β$-decay: joint effects from chiral two-body currents and many-body correlations

Abstract

In nuclear $β$-decay calculations, the axial-vector coupling constant $g_A \approx 1.27$ usually needs to be quenched phenomenologically by a factor $q~\approx$ 0.75 to reproduce {the Gamow-Teller (GT) transition strengths}. We propose a novel approach to quench the GT {strength} of $β$-decay within the microscopic random phase approximation (RPA) plus particle-vibration coupling (PVC) approach, incorporating the contributions of two-body currents (TBC) derived from chiral effective field theory ($χ$EFT). Self-consistent RPA+PVC calculations are performed in three doubly magic nuclei, $^{56}$Ni, $^{100}$Sn, and $^{132}$Sn, with various Skyrme energy density functionals, and the effect of TBC is evaluated by using the obtained many-body wavefunctions. A combined effects of the many-body correlations introduced by PVC and chiral TBC quench the GT strength and reproduce quantitatively experimental data without any additional adjustments. The extracted quenching factors $q$ by the present microscopic model lie in the range $\approx$ 0.73--0.80, which is quite close to the commonly adopted empirical value of $q \approx 0.75$.