Structure and lifetime of the hypertriton

Abstract:  We calculate the structure of the hypertriton in pionless effective field theory and find a pronounced Lambda-deuteron cluster structure. This motivates our investigation of the hypertriton lifetime as a function of the Lambda separation energy in an effective field theory with Lambda and deuteron degrees of freedom. We also consider the impact of new measurements of the weak decay parameter of the Lambda. While the sensitivity of the total width to B_Lambda is small, the partial widths for decays into individual final states and the experimentally measured ratio R=Gamma_3He/(Gamma_3He+Gamma_pd) show a strong dependence. We comment on recent measurements of hypertriton properties in heavy ion collisions.