QED Radiative Corrections to the Decay ${\pi }^0\to e^{+}{e}^{-}$

Abstract

In view of the recent interest in the decays of mesons into a pair of light leptons, a computation of the QED radiative corrections to the decay of ${\pi }^0$ into an electron-positron pair is presented here. The results indicate that the peak value of the differential decay rate is reduced by about $50\%$, because of soft-photon radiation. The number of $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ pairs having invariant masses in an energy bin of 0.5 MeV centered around $m_{\pi }$ is found to be about $20\%$ smaller than the one it would be if radiative corrections were neglected.

Comments: 16 Latex pages, 3 figures not included, available upon request, YCTP-P1-93