Hot model of muonium formation in liquids

Abstract

The mechanism of formation of muonium atoms from positive muons was studied here through measurements of the yield of diamagnetic muon states in dipolar aprotic solvents and for scavenger solutions in hexane and methanol. The results are compared with published data on common solvents covering a full range of the physicochemical properties of liquids that affect an ionic formation mechanism, namely their static dielectric constants, electron mobilities, and radiolysis yields of electrons. It is concluded that muonium is not formed by a thermal charge-neutralization reaction in these chemically-active media, though that mechanism does contribute to muonium formation in inert media like liquefied noble gases. It is clear that muonium materializes on a much shorter timescale than the recently proposed "delayed" mechanism (microseconds) and the earlier "spur" model (nanoseconds). In contrast, the data referring to all these liquids are consistent with the intra-track "hot" model. This is the only Mu-formation model proposed so far in which the immediate precursors of Mu (Mu(hot)) are neither scavengable nor ionic.Key words: muonium atoms, formation mechanism, hot model, spur model, delayed-muonium-formation model, diamagnetic yields.