Muon capture on the deuteron is studied in a framework that essentially incorporates heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory (HBchiPT). It is found that by far the dominant contribution to mud capture comes from a region of the final three-body phase-space in which the energy of the two neutrons is sufficiently small for HBchiPT to be applicable. The single unknown low-energy constant having been fixed from the tritium beta decay rate, our calculation contains no free parameter. Our estimate of the mud capture rate is consistent with the existing data. The relation between Ad capture and the nud reactions, which are important for the SNO experiments, is briefly discussed. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. References: 34
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