High energy muon interactions - C.E.R.N. work on weak interactions

Abstract

What I have to say will consist largely of speculation, because no unusual feature of muon interactions at high energies has yet been established. Considerable efforts have been made in the last few years to find an anomalous effect, but so far the result has been negative. This is probably because we have not yet reached high enough energies, as will become evident during the course of this talk. Figure 19 shows a number of possible interactions of the muon, which will be considered in detail below. There is first the electromagnetic coupling to the photon, with coupling constant e satisfying e 2 = 1/137 (figure 19( a )). Figure 19( b ) shows the weak interaction coupling, to the intermediate boson W ± (which is here assumed to exist). To obtain the correct strength for the overall weak four-fermion interaction one requires g 2 / m 2 w = G weak = 10 -5 / m 2 N , where m N is the nucleon mass. Thus only the ratio of g 2 to m 2 w is fixed.