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Charged Pion Contribution to the Anomalous Magnetic Moment of the Muon

Posted on:2014-09-12Degree:Ph.DType:Thesis
University:California Institute of TechnologyCandidate:Engel, KevinFull Text:PDF
GTID:2450390008956945Subject:Physics
Abstract/Summary:
The model dependence inherent in hadronic calculations is one of the dominant sources of uncertainty in the theoretical prediction of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. In this thesis, we focus on the charged pion contribution and turn a critical eye on the models employed in the few previous calculations of ap+p-m . Chiral perturbation theory provides a check on these models at low energies, and we therefore calculate the charged pion contribution to light-by-light (LBL) scattering to O (p6). We show that the dominant corrections to the leading order (LO) result come from two low energy constants which show up in the form factors for the γππ and γγππ vertices. Comparison with the existing models reveal a potentially significant omission - none include the pion polarizability corrections associated with the γγππ vertex. We next consider alternative models where the pion polarizability is produced through exchange of the a 1 axial vector meson. These have poor UV behavior, however, making them unsuited for the ap+p-m calculation. We turn to a simpler form factor modeling approach, generating two distinct models which reproduce the pion polarizability corrections at low energies, have the correct QCD scaling at high energies, and generate finite contributions to ap+p-m . With these two models, we calculate the charged pion contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, finding values larger than those previously reported: aIm = –1.779(4) × 10–10, aIIm = –4.892(3) × 10–10.
Keywords/Search Tags:Charged pion contribution, Anomalous magnetic moment
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