Title: Pion decay in magnetic fields

Speaker: Prof. Gunnar Bali, University of Regensburg, Germany

Abstract: During supernovae and nucleon star mergers regions with large magnetic field strengths emerge. Are processes on the elementary particle level, in particular weak decays, affected by the presence of such fields? For instance the proton mass is increased and parity violation allows for additional beta-decay form factors. As a simple test case we study the decay rate of charged pions in such an environment. This is carried out, combining a tree-level calculation with lattice QCD simulations. The results are somewhat surprising.