# Comment on ’Induced Pseudoscalar Coupling Constant’ by Il-Tong Cheon and Myung Ki Cheoun (nucl-th/9811009)

## Abstract

In a recent preprint Cheon and Cheoun have derived from a chiral model an additional term, not usually appearing in the standard matrix element for radiative muon capture. Using that term they generate a large correction to the RMC spectrum which tends to resolve the problem caused by the too large value of $`g_P`$ found in the TRIUMF RMC experiment. In this comment we observe first that their extra term leads to an amplitude which is not gauge invariant and second that such a term should be present, in a gauge invariant way, in an earlier full chiral perturbation theory calculation, which however found negligible differences from the standard approach.

preprint:  TRI–PP–98–37  

A recent TRIUMF experiment  on radiative muon capture (RMC) on the proton found a value of the induced pseudoscalar coupling constant $`g_P`$ which was almost 1.5 times the value predicted by the Goldberger-Treiman relation. This experiment was analyzed using the standard approach  and in particular the explicit formalism of Beder and Fearing . It presents a puzzle since other measurements of $`g_P`$, particularly in non radiative muon capture, seem to agree with the expected value.

Cheon and Cheoun  have proposed a possible solution to this. They use a simple chiral model to generate an additional seagull type term which they claim is not included in the standard approach. They then show that this extra term has an appreciable effect on the photon spectrum which, at least qualitatively, would solve the problem with $`g_P`$ presented by the TRIUMF data.

The purpose of this comment is to make some observations which suggest some difficulties with this proposed solution to the problem.

The first observation is that the RMC amplitude generated by including this extra term is not gauge invariant. The full amplitude is given by Eq. (25) of Cheon and Cheoun . It consists of the standard contributions $`M_a,\mathrm{}M_e`$, which are identical to, for example, Eq. (1) of Ref. , plus the new term $`\mathrm{\Delta }M_e`$. It is well known that the standard terms are gauge invariant, in fact the amplitude $`M_e`$ is obtained via a minimal substitution on the other amplitudes and is included specifically to enforce gauge invariance. Alternatively it is easy to check gauge invariance explicitly by making the substitution $`ϵk`$ in the amplitudes $`M_a,\mathrm{}M_e`$. The same substitution made in the new term $`\mathrm{\Delta }M_e`$ leads to a result proportional to $`\overline{u}_n\gamma _5k/u_p`$ which is not zero in general, so that the full amplitude is not gauge invariant.

Gauge invariance is important because it forces the cancellation of similar sized terms. One can see for example that gauge invariance of the $`g_P`$ terms of the standard amplitude comes about via contributions from $`M_a,M_b,M_d,`$ and $`M_e`$ all of which are of the same order. Thus one might expect that a fully gauge invariant amplitude should include additional terms similar to, and of the same order as, $`\mathrm{\Delta }M_e`$, with a priori unknown numerical consequences. But, in any case, one can not trust the numerical predictions arising from a non gauge invariant amplitude.

The second observation is that this new term in principle would have been included already in an earlier chiral perturbation theory (ChPT) calculation  which however found negligible effects relative to the standard calculation. ChPT starts with the most general Lagrangian satisfying chiral symmetry. Since this new term was derived from a chiral model one would expect that a term of the same structure would appear in the ChPT Lagrangian. Ando and Min  recently performed a full, and presumedly gauge invariant, ChPT calculation of RMC to $`O(p^3)`$. The low energy constants needed were all determined either directly from experiment or via some sort of meson dominance assumption. They found that the $`O(p^3)`$ terms were negligible and did not solve the $`g_P`$ problem.

One can be a bit more explicit. In the notation of  one can show explicitly, without doing a full calculation, that in the usual ChPT calculation there is a term even at leading order which would generate a seagull amplitude with the structure of $`\mathrm{\Delta }M_e`$. Furthermore there are also the terms needed to make it gauge invariant. One can also look at the heavy baryon ChPT reduction of the amplitude of the standard approach, simply by reducing the spinors and gamma matrices as done in  and see that the term $`\mathrm{\Delta }M_e`$ appears already in the standard amplitude, in $`M_b`$, with the terms required for gauge invariance coming from the other diagrams.

The author would like to thank T.-S. Park for pointing out an error in the original version of this comment and for some useful discussions, and Dong-Pil Min also for some useful comments. This work was supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.