Limits to second-class nucleonic and mesonic currents
1 TRIUMF, 4004 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada
2 University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QH, UK
Received: 25 October 1999 Communicated by B. Povh
Abstract
Second-class currents, i.e those of irregular G-parity in the definition of Weinberg, induce
differences between the ft-values for positive and negative electron emission in the mirror beta-decay
of complex nuclei and, together with weak magnetism, there affect various correlation phenomena. Such
currents might arise either from (strong-interaction-clad) 
vertex terms or from the in-flight
decay of exchange mesons, most probably
,
or from both, in the manner first
explored in detail by Kubodera, Delorme and Rho. The nucleonic and mesonic effects can be (partially)
disentangled only by studying a suite of cases and inter-relating those cases through suitable many-body
wave-functions. Present data are analyzed to show that, at the 90% CL, the amplitudes of second-class
(strong-interaction-clad)-nucleonic-vertex and meson-exchange terms are both at least an order of
magnitude below those of corresponding first-class terms. These experimental upper limits are
themselves about one order of magnitude larger than the values expected from mu, mdsymmetry-breaking. Evidences from particle physics are quantitatively comparable to, and consistent
with, those from nuclear structure physics but are less detailed and less surely based.
Copyright Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2000
