Determination of |Vud| from nuclear mirror transitions

Understand

The Vud element of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa quark mixing matrix has traditionally been determined from the analysis of data in nuclear superallowed 0+ to 0+ transitions, neutron decay and pion beta decay.

• We show here that this element can independently be determined from nuclear mirror transitions.
• The extracted value, |Vud| = 0.9719 +- 0.0017, is at 1.2 combined standard deviations from the value obtained in superallowed 0+ to 0+ transitions and has a similar precision than the value obtained from neutron decay experiments.
• We discuss some prospects to improve its precision through experiments in nuclear mirror transitions.