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Study of the Semileptonic Decay in Lattice QCD
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 231901 – Published 2 December, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/bvs9-wcsj
Abstract
We present the first lattice QCD determination of the vector and axial-vector form factors, which are essential inputs for studying the semileptonic decay . This channel provides a clean, theoretically controlled avenue for extracting the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element from the baryon sector. Our analysis uses a gauge ensemble with physical light, strange, and charm quark masses and yields the most precise determination to date of the full set of transition form factors—including second-class contributions—as well as the associated couplings, radii, and the ratio of muon-to-electron decay rates, an observable sensitive to possible nonstandard scalar and tensor interactions. We compare our nonperturbative results with next-to-next-to-leading order expansions in the small parameter . We find that the common phenomenological approximation of neglecting the dependence of the form factors leads to a deviation in the decay rate. This underscores the critical importance of precise, fully nonperturbative form factor inputs for achieving the subpercent precision targets of upcoming experimental programs.
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