4-momentum conservation as the principal framework for mesonic decay: The case of helium-5-lambda

Abstract

Negative-pion and neutral-pion mesonic decays of the hypernucleus $ _Λ^5$He are investigated within two-body and three-body relativistic kinematics in the rest-frame of the hypernucleus. 4-momentum conservation fully constrains the two-body decay, giving rise to a monochromatic pion momentum that is determined through the Newton-Raphson root-finding algorithm. In the case of three-body decay, where 4-momentum conservation is insufficient, the final-state momenta are parametrised by variables whose variations account for all kinematically allowed momenta. A Monte Carlo sampling method is then employed to generate 50 000 decay events per channel that simultaneously satisfy both energy and momentum conservation. The resulting pion momentum distributions exhibit clear peaks at 103.0 MeV/c for neutral pion decay and 97.3 MeV/c for negative pion decay. In addition, only 0.27\% of neutral pion decay events and 0.03\% of negative pion decay events produce nucleons with momenta exceeding the Fermi momentum of $ ^4$He, and are therefore allowed by the Pauli exclusion principle.