New phenomena in laser-assisted leptonic decays of the negatively charged boson $W^{-}$

Abstract

In this paper and within the standard Glashow-Weinberg-Salam model of electroweak interactions, we study theoretically the leptonic decay of the $W^{-}$-boson $(W^{-}\rightarrow \ell^{-}\barν_{\ell})$ in the presence of a circularly polarized electromagnetic field and we examine the laser effect, in terms of its field strength and frequency, on the leptonic decay rate and the phenomenon of multiphoton processes. The calculations are carried out using the exact relativistic wave functions of charged particles in an electromagnetic field. It was found that the laser significantly contributed to reducing the probability of $W^{-}$-boson decay. We show that the laser-assisted decay rate is equal to the laser-free one only when the famous Kroll-Watson sum rule is fulfilled. The notable effect of the laser on the leptonic decay rate was reasonably interpreted by the well-known quantum Zeno effect or by the opening of channels other than leptonic ones to decay. We hope that this article paved the way for an upcoming paper to study the hadronic decay of the $W^{-}$-boson and then explore the laser effect on its lifetime and branching ratios.