Charged pion decay in a laser field

Abstract

We study the decays $\pi^{+}\to l^{+}\nu_{l}$ in the presence of a background electromagnetic plane wave with circular polarization. We find that, in the presence of this background, the number of hadronic form factors required to describe the pion-to-vacuum amplitude increases from one to four. Three of these form factors are associated with the axial vector current and one with the vector piece, which is in general different from zero. We obtain analytical expressions for the corresponding contributions to the decay width, considering in particular some range of values of interest for the frequency and amplitude of the external wave. For laser frequencies $\omega$ of the order of the eV, it is seen that the main correction to the result obtained in absence of the external field is proportional to the vector form factor, carrying a suppression factor of order $\sim(\omega/m_{\pi})^{4/3}$. In addition, we show that our expressions can be connected with the Kroll-Watson formula, which provides the differential cross section for the scattering of a charged particle by some potential in the presence of a strong external electromagnetic wave. Our analytical results are also compatible with previous numerical calculations obtained in the limit of low amplitude laser fields, offering new insight on some characteristics of these results.