Muon transfer in excited muonic hydrogen.

Abstract

The cross sections and rates of muon transfer between excited states of muonic hydrogen are presented as functions of collision energy for different isotope combinations. Electron screening of the field of the target nucleus is taken into account. The ground-state population, ${\mathit{q}}_{1\mathit{s}}$, of muonic hydrogen is obtained for different collision energies, target densities, and relative hydrogen isotope concentrations, considering cascade processes for the principal quantum numbers n\ensuremath{\le}12. The obtained results for ${\mathit{q}}_{1\mathit{s}}$ are significantly smaller than the recent experimental data for D-T and H-D mixtures (tenfold and twice, respectively) and indicate that some new effects must be considered to improve the agreement.