Microscopic Calculations of Isospin-Breaking Corrections to Superallowed Beta Decay

W. Satuła, J. Dobaczewski, W. Nazarewicz, and M. Rafalski

Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 132502 – Published 29 March 2011

Abstract

The superallowed $β$ -decay rates that provide stringent constraints on physics beyond the standard model of particle physics are affected by nuclear structure effects through isospin-breaking corrections. The self-consistent isospin- and angular-momentum-projected nuclear density functional theory is used for the first time to compute those corrections for a number of Fermi transitions in nuclei from $A = 10$ to $A = 74$ . The resulting leading element of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix, $| V_{ud} | = 0.974 47 (23)$ , agrees well with the recent result of Towner and Hardy [Phys. Rev. C 77, 025501 (2008)].

Received 5 January 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.132502

Authors & Affiliations

W. Satuła¹, J. Dobaczewski^1,2, W. Nazarewicz^3,4,1, and M. Rafalski¹

¹Institute of Theoretical Physics, Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, ul. Hoża 69, PL-00-681 Warsaw, Poland
²Department of Physics, P.O. Box 35 (YFL), University of Jyväskylä, FI-40014 Jyväskylä, Finland
³Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996, USA
⁴Physics Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, P.O. Box 2008, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA