Tritium $β$-decay in chiral effective field theory

Abstract

We evaluate the Fermi and Gamow-Teller (GT) matrix elements in tritium $β$-decay by including in the charge-changing weak current the corrections up to one loop recently derived in nuclear chiral effective field theory ($χ$ EFT). The trinucleon wave functions are obtained from hyperspherical-harmonics solutions of the Schrodinger equation with two- and three-nucleon potentials corresponding to either $χ$ EFT (the N3LO/N2LO combination) or meson-exchange phenomenology (the AV18/UIX combination). We find that contributions due to loop corrections in the axial current are, in relative terms, as large as (and in some cases, dominate) those from one-pion exchange, which nominally occur at lower order in the power counting. We also provide values for the low-energy constants multiplying the contact axial current and three-nucleon potential, required to reproduce the experimental GT matrix element and trinucleon binding energies in the N3LO/N2LO and AV18/UIX calculations.

19 pages,6 figures, corrections to Text as suggested by Referee added; Erratum: 4 pages, 3 figures, corrections to Eq.(20), Tables I, II, III, Figures 4, 5, conclusions unchanged