MUON TRANSFER IN EXCITED MUONIC HYDROGEN

The cross sections and rates of muon transfer between excited states o f muonic hydrogen are presented as functions of collision energy for d ifferent isotope combinations. Electron screening of the field of the target nucleus is taken into account. The ground-state population, q1s , of muonic hydrogen is obtained for different collision energies, tar get densities, and relative hydrogen isotope concentrations, consideri ng cascade processes for the principal quantum numbers n less-than-or- equal-to 12. The obtained results for q1s are significantly smaller th an the recent experimental data for D-T and H-D mixtures (tenfold and twice, respectively) and indicate that some new effects must be consid ered to improve the agreement.