The Orthopositronium Decay Spectrum using NRQED

Abstract

The photon spectrum in orthopositronium to 3 gamma decay is computed using effective field theory methods. For energetic photons, the spectrum agrees with the Ore-Powell result, but deviates from it when the photon energy is comparable to the positronium binding energy. The decay spectrum in this region depends on a positronium structure function, which is computed in this paper. At still lower energies the photon spectrum is dominated by the parapositronium resonance contribution. Our results are compatible with Low's theorem on soft photon emission.