Few-nucleon scattering in pionless effective field theory

Abstract

In nuclear physics, effective field theory is a low-energy manifestation of QCD with baryons and pions as its constituents, rather than quarks and gluons. At very low energies, even the pions can be integrated out, providing a simple yet thorough framework to study nuclear physics with controlled theoretical uncertainties. This work extends previous studies to $A\ensuremath{\le}4$ with accurate predictions for low-energy few-nucleon scattering, comparable to those from the best current analyses. The work confirms that a four-body force is needed at next-to-leading order to achieve cutoff-independent results.

Topics & Concepts