Analysis of Neutron-Electron Interaction in the Relativistic Perturbation Theory

Abstract

Recent experiments indicate that the charge distribution of the physical neutron is almost neutralized by the cancellation of the nucleon core and the meson cloud charges, which cam hardly be expected from the fixedsource theory. On the other hand, the relativistic pscoupling theory, which indicates that both the nucleon core and the meson cloud spread out over the region of about twice the nucleon Compton wave length, seems to be more promising. In this paper, the effective neutronelectron potential is analyzed by perturbation theory, evaluating separately for each time-ordered graph so as to compare with the result of the fixed-source theory. It is found that (1) owing to the nucleon recoil effect, the p-wave meson contribution is only about 1/2.3 times the one in the fixed source theory; (2) the (--) energy state contribution for the nucleon core charge is as large as that of ( plus or minus ) emergy state; and (3) s-wave meson contributions, which are not involved in the fixed source theory, are taken into account qualitatively. Thus the main discrepancy with experiments arises from the inadequate treatment in the fixed source theory, though a part of the yet remaining discrepancy might be explained by themore » modification of the quantum electrodymamics as has been discussed by Yennie et al. (auth)« less