Effective Field Theory in Nuclear Physics

I discuss effective field theories for heavy bound systems, particularly bound systems involving two heavy quarks. The emphasis is on the relevant concepts and on interesting physical applications and results.

Lectures delivered at the 17th National Nuclear Physics Summer School 2005, Berkeley, CA, June 6-17, 2005.

Chiral effective field theory is being developed into a precision tool for low-energy nuclear physics. I review the state of the art in the two-nucleon sector, discuss applications to few-nucleon systems and address challenges that will have to be faced over the coming years.

The application of density functional theory to nuclear structure is discussed, highlighting the current status of the effective action approach using effective field theory, and outlining future challenges.

Lattice effective field theory applies the principles of effective field theory in a lattice framework where space and time are discretized. Nucleons are placed on the lattice sites, and the interactions are tuned to replicate the observed features of the nuclear force. Monte Carlo simulations are then employed to predict the properties of nuclear few- and many-body systems. We review the basic methods and several theoretical and algorithmic advances that have been used to fu...

I review the recent progress in our understanding of nuclear forces in terms of an effective field theory (EFT) for low-energy QCD and put this progress into historical perspective. This is followed by an assessment of the current status of EFT based nuclear potentials. In concluding, I will summarize some unresolved issues.

Recent progress in Lorentz-covariant quantum field theories of the nuclear many-body problem ({\em quantum hadrodynamics}, or QHD) is discussed. The importance of modern perspectives in effective field theory and density functional theory for understanding the successes of QHD is emphasized. The inclusion of hadronic electromagnetic structure and of nonanalytic terms in the energy functional is also considered.

Nuclear energy density functionals (EDFs) have a long history of success in reproducing properties of nuclei across the table of the nuclides. They capture quantitatively the emergent features of bound nuclei, such as nuclear saturation and pairing, yet greater accuracy and improved uncertainty quantification are actively sought. Implementations of phenomenological EDFs are suggestive of effective field theory (EFT) formulations and there are hints of an underlying power coun...

We describe a strategy for attacking the canonical nuclear structure problem ---bound-state properties of a system of point nucleons interacting via a two-body potential---which involves an expansion in the number of particles scattering at high momenta, but is otherwise exact. The required self-consistent solutions of the Bloch-Horowitz equation for effective interactions and operators are obtained by an efficient Green's function method based on the Lanczos algorithm. We ca...

Applications of effective field theory to nucleon-nucleon scattering, quarkonia decay and production and B meson decay are discussed. Some unresolved issues are considered.