Precision measurement of the rate of nuclear muon capture in the muonic hydrogen atom and the determination of the pseudoscalar form factor of the nucleon

Abstract

The rate ΛS of nuclear muon capture by a proton from the hyperfine singlet ground state of the µp atom has been measured using a new experimental method based on a time-projection chamber operating in an ultrapure hydrogen gas at a pressure of 10 atm. The capture rate has been determined from the difference between the measured lifetime of the negative muon in hydrogen and the world average lifetime of the positive muon. The analysis of 10% of the collected statistics (2 × 1010) of µe decays yields the muon capture rate ΛS = 725.0 ± 17.4 s−1, from which the pseudoscalar form factor of the nucleon, gP(qc2 = −0.88mµ2) = 7.3 ± 1.1, is determined. The further analysis of the collected experimental data should improve the precision of this measurement by a factor of 3.