Coupling constant invariants in β-decay

Abstract

The principle recently used by Pauli (1) and Pubsey (2) is extended and applied to single β-decay without lepton conservation, and to β-decay with non-vanishing neutrino mass. Identities are found between the coupling constant invariants for Pauli’s (1) general interaction, and it is shown that these involve at most 35 independent real constants. Conditions are given for invariance under space inversion, time reversal, particle-antiparticle conjugation, and for four interesting special theories, including lepton conservation and the two-state neutrino theory. A brief discussion is given of how experimental knowledge of the invariants, in particular those occurring in single β-decay, can be used to check the various special cases.