Chiral dynamics in few-nucleon systems

The low-energy effective theory of nuclear physics based on chiral symmetry is reviewed. Topics discussed include the nucleon-nucleon force, few-body potentials, isospin violation, pion-deuteron scattering, proton-neutron radiative capture, pion photoproduction on the deuteron, and pion production in proton-proton collisions.

Determination of the proper power-counting scheme is an important issue for the systematic application of Chiral Effective Field Theory in nuclear physics. We analyze the cutoff dependence of three-nucleon observables (the neutron-deuteron scattering lengths and the triton binding energy) at the leading and next-to-leading orders of a power counting that ensures order-by-order renormalization in the two-nucleon system. Our results imply that three-body forces are not needed f...

We present a complete calculation of nucleon-deuteron scattering as well as ground and low-lying excited states of light nuclei in the mass range A=3-16 up through next-to-next-to-leading order in chiral effective field theory using semilocal coordinate-space regularized two- and three-nucleon forces. It is shown that both of the low-energy constants entering the three-nucleon force at this order can be reliably determined from the triton binding energy and the differential c...

Long-range contributions to the three-nucleon force that have been recently worked out in chiral effective field theory at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order are for the first time included in the triton and the doublet nucleon-deuteron scattering length calculations. The strengths of the two short-range terms available at this order in the chiral expansion are determined from the triton binding energy and the neutron-deuteron doublet scattering length. The structure of th...

We present the first nucleon-nucleon potential at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (fourth order) of chiral perturbation theory. Charge-dependence is included up to next-to-leading order of the isospin-violation scheme. The accuracy for the reproduction of the NN data below 290 MeV lab. energy is comparable to the one of phenomenological high-precision potentials. Since NN potentials of order three and less are known to be deficient in quantitative terms, the present wor...

We have quantified the statistical uncertainties of the low-energy coupling-constants (LECs) of an optimized nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction from chiral effective field theory ($\chi$EFT) at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO). In addition, we have propagated the impact of the uncertainties of the LECs to two-nucleon scattering phase shifts, effective range parameters, and deuteron observables.

We present improved nucleon-nucleon potentials derived in chiral effective field theory up to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order. We argue that the nonlocal momentum-space regulator employed in the two-nucleon potentials of Refs. [E. Epelbaum, W. Gloeckle, U.-G. Mei{\ss}ner, Nucl. Phys. A747 (2005) 362], [D.R. Entem, R. Machleidt, Phys. Rev. C68 (2003) 041001] is not the most efficient choice, in particular since it affects the long-range part of the interaction. We are ab...

I discuss the dynamics of the two-nucleon system as obtained from a chiral nucleon-nucleon potential. This potential is based on a modified Weinberg power counting and contains chiral one- and two-pion exchange as well as four-nucleon contact interactions. The description of the S-waves is very precise. Higher partial waves are also well reproduced. We also find a good description of most of the deuteron properties.

We substantiate our statement that the deuteron remains bound in the chiral limit. We critically discuss recent claims that effective field theory cannot give a definite answer to this question.

Chiral effective field theory (ChEFT) is a modern framework to analyze the properties of few-nucleon systems at low energies. It is based on the most general effective Lagrangian for pions and nucleons consistent with the chiral symmetry of QCD. For energies below the pion-production threshold it is possible to eliminate the pionic degrees of freedom and derive nuclear potentials and nuclear current operators solely in terms of the nucleonic degrees of freedom. This is very i...