Muon transfer from deuterium to helium

الأصل · EN

We report on an experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland measuring x rays from muon transfer from deuterium to helium. Both the ground state transfer via the exotic dmu3,4He* molecules and the excited state transfer from mud* were measured. The use of CCD detectors allowed x rays from 1.5 keV to 11 keV to be detected with sufficient energy resolution to separate the transitions to different final states in both deuterium and helium. The x-ray peaks of the dmu3He* and dmu4He* molecules were measured with good statistics. For the D2+3He mixture, the peak has its maximum at Edmu3He = 6768 +- 12 eV with FWHM Gammadmu3He = 863 +- 10 eV. Furthermore the radiative branching ratio was found to be kappadmu3He = 0.301 +- 0.061. For the D₂+4He mixture, the maximum of the peak lies at Edmu4He = 6831 +- 8 eV and the FWHM is Gammadmu4He = 856 +- 10 eV. The radiative branching ratio is kappadmu4He = 0.636 +- 0.097. The excited state transfer is limited by the probability to reach the deuterium ground state, q₁s. This coefficient was determined for both mixtures: q³He₁s = 68.9 +- 2.7% and q⁴He₁s = 90.1 +- 1.5.