Description
Muons decay in vacuum mainly via the leptonic channel to an electron, an electron neutrino and a muon antineutrino. Previous investigations into the effect of a strong electromagnetic background on muon decay have concluded [1] that the muonic strong-field parameter must be of order unity to have a significant effect on the muon lifetime, which is well out of reach of current lab-based experimental parameters. However, previous analyses have assumed the muon intensity parameter is much smaller than unity (for example when interacting with a monochromatic wave [2]) or much larger than unity (for example in the interaction with constant crossed fields [3]). With the prospect of modern lasers reaching electron intensity parameters of $\xi_{e} \sim O(100)$, or equivalently muon intensity parameters of $\xi_{\mu} \sim O(1)$, it seems a good time to revisit the problem of muon decay in a laser pulse using modern descriptions which do not restrict the value of the muon intensity parameter. We present results for muon decay in a laser pulse and find new dependencies on laser parameters which circumvent the restriction that previous analyses arrived at using constant fields.
References:
[1] N B Narozhny and A M Fedotov, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 219101 (2008)
[2] D A Dicus, A Farzinnia, W W Repko and T M Tinsley, Phys. Rev. D 79, 013004 (2009)
[3] V I Ritus, J. Russ. Laser Res. 6, 497 (1985)
