Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-2024

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Physics

Major Professor

Lucas Platter

Committee Members

Lucas Platter, Thomas Papenbrock, Nadia Fomin, Lawrence H. Heilbronn

Abstract

This research explores the intricacies of Electroweak Interactions on the Deuteron, with a particular focus on muon capture and the hyperfine shift in atomic and muonic deuterium. These processes are phenomena of significant importance in nuclear physics. Understanding these interactions is crucial for illuminating fundamental aspects of nuclear structure and providing insight into the fundamental forces and interactions governing atomic and nuclear systems, as well as related processes such as proton-proton fusion or other astrophysical reactions, which are phenomena that cannot be easily reproduced in a laboratory and require a theoretical treatment to predict observables. Through this research, we systematically quantify the theoretical uncertainties associated with chiral effective field theory predictions of the muon-deuteron capture rate and the hyperfine energy shifts in atomic and muonic deuterium focusing on the relevant neutron-neutron (proton-neutron) partial wave channels in the final state, respectively. Our investigation encompasses the examination of several key factors, including the dependence on the cutoff employed to regularize the interactions, and the truncation of the chiral effective field theory expansion of the current operators employed in this research. By integrating these approaches, we present estimates that are comparable to existing data and previous theoretical predictions.

Comments

Electroweak Interactions using chiral Effective Field Theory

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