Superallowed nuclear beta decays and precision tests of the Standard Model

Abstract

For many decades, the main source of information on the top-left corner element of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa quark mixing matrix $V_{ud}$ were superallowed nuclear beta decays with an impressive 0.01\% precision. This precision, apart from experimental data, relies on theoretical calculations in which nuclear structure-dependent effects and uncertainties play a prime role. This review is dedicated to a thorough reassessment of all ingredients that enter the extraction of the value of $V_{ud}$ from experimental data. We tried to keep balance between historical retrospect and new developments, many of which occurred in just five past years. They have not yet been reviewed in a complete manner, not least because new results are a-coming. This review aims at filling this gap and offers an in-depth yet accessible summary of all recent developments.

Version to appear as Invited review for Annual Reviews in Particle and Nuclear Science; 25 pages, 6 figures, 4 tables

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Ab-initio electroweak corrections to superallowed $\beta$ decays and their impact on $V_{ud}$
• Radiative corrections to superallowed $\beta$ decays in effective field theory
• An $\text{ab initio}$ strategy for taming nuclear-structure dependence of $V_{ud}$ extractions: the ${}^{10}\mathrm{C}\to {}^{10}\mathrm{B}$ superallowed transition
• Field Theory of the Fermi Function
• Simultaneous Extraction of the Weak Radius and the Weak Mixing Angle from Parity-Violating Electron Scattering on ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$
• Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa unitarity deficit reduction via finite nuclear size
• Unique forbidden beta decays at zero momentum transfer
• Effect of isoscalar and isovector scalar fields on baryon semileptonic decays in nuclear matter
• Radiative Corrections and the Renormalization Group for the Two-Nucleon Interaction in Effective Field Theory
• Gross-Llewellyn Smith sum rule from lattice QCD
• The Role of Ab Initio Beta-Decay Calculations in Light Nuclei for Probes of Physics Beyond the Standard Model