Radiative corrections to leptonic decays of charged pseudoscalar mesons

Abstract

We show that weak-interaction gauge-theory renormalization corrections are negligible, and that explicit model dependences are small for the ratio $\frac{\ensuremath{\Gamma}(\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}e\ensuremath{\nu} or e\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\gamma})}{\ensuremath{\Gamma}(\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremath{\nu} or \ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\gamma})}$. We use the postulate that this continues to hold for other pseudoscalar mesons to justify examining these radiative corrections for $\ensuremath{\pi}$, $K$, and $D$ in a phenomenological fashion.