Tritium $\beta$-decay and Proton-Proton Fusion in Pionless Effective Field Theory

Abstract

The Gamow-Teller and Fermi matrix elements, ${\left<\mathbf{GT}\right>}$ and ${\left<\mathbf{F}\right>}$, respectively, for tritium $\beta$-decay are calculated to next-to-leading order (NLO) in pionless effective field theory in the absence of Coulomb and isospin violation giving the leading order predictions ${\left<\mathbf{GT}\right>}_{0}=0.9807$ and ${\left<\mathbf{F}\right>}_{0}=1$. Using an experimentally determined value for the tritium-$\beta$ decay GT matrix element, the two-body axial current low energy constant is fixed at NLO yielding $L_{1,A}=6.01\pm2.08$ fm$^{3}$ at the renormalization scale of the physical pion mass, which agrees with predictions based on naive dimensional analysis. Finally, the consequences of Wigner-SU(4) spin-isospin symmetry are considered for the Gamow-Teller matrix element.