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E. Epelbaum

Publications and source records attributed to E. Epelbaum.

At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources

The multiple-scattering series in pion-deuteron scattering and the nucleon-nucleon potential: perspectives from effective field theory

Important contributions to meson-nucleus scattering are produced by terms in the multiple-scattering series, which is defined as the sum of all diagrams where the meson scatters back and forth between a pair of static nucleons before leaving the nucleus. In particular, the sum of this series is needed for an accurate description of kaon-deuteron scattering, and appears as part of the nucleon-nucleon potential. In this article we present some effective-field-theory (EFT)-based insights into this series in the case of two-nucleon systems. In particular, we discuss the fact that, if meson-nucleon scattering is approximated by the scattering-length term, individual terms of the series are divergent, and enhanced with respect to the straightforward expectation from chiral perturbation theory ($χ$PT). This apparently indicates the presence of similarly enhanced counterterms. However, we show that when the series is resummed the divergences cancel, such that no additional information on short-range interactions is needed to obtain predictions for observables after resummation. We discuss the conditions under which this resummation is justified. We show that the same issues arise in the $NN$ potential, where the resummed series produces poles whose appearance indicates the breakdown scale of the $χ$PT expansion for that quantity. This demonstrates unequivocally that $χ$PT cannot be applied to compute $V(r)$ for distances smaller than $r \sim 1$ fm at least in the theory without explicit Delta(1232) degrees of freedom. We briefly discuss whether this bound can be lowered if the Delta resonance is included in the EFT as an explicit degree of freedom.

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Calculation of Doublet Capture Rate for Muon Capture in Deuterium within Chiral Effective Field Theory

The doublet capture rate of the negative muon capture in deuterium is calculated employing the nuclear wave functions generated from accurate nucleon-nucleon potentials constructed at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order of heavy-baryon chiral perturbation theory and the weak meson exchange current operator derived within the same formalism. All but one of the low-energy constants that enter the calculation were fixed from pion-nucleon and nucleon-nucleon scattering data. The low-energy constant d^R (c_D), which cannot be determined from the purely two-nucleon data, was extracted recently from the triton beta-decay and the binding energies of the three-nucleon systems. The calculated values of the doublet capture rates show a rather large spread for the used values of the d^R. Precise measurement of the doublet capture rate in the future will not only help to constrain the value of d^R, but also provide a highly nontrivial test of the nuclear chiral EFT framework. Besides, the precise knowledge of the constant d^R will allow for consistent calculations of other two-nucleon weak processes, such as proton-proton fusion and solar neutrino scattering on deuterons, which are important for astrophysics.

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Pion production in nucleon-nucleon collisions in chiral effective field theory: next-to-next-to-leading order contributions

A complete calculation of the pion-nucleon loops that contribute to the transition operator for $NN\to NNπ$ up-to-and-including next-to-next-to-leading order (N$^2$LO) in chiral effective field theory near threshold is presented. The evaluation is based on the so-called momentum counting scheme, which takes into account the relatively large momentum of the initial nucleons inherent in pion-production reactions. We show that the significant cancellations between the loops found at next-to-leading order (NLO) in the earlier studies are also operative at N$^2$LO. In particular, the $1/m_N$ corrections (with $m_N$ being the nucleon mass) to loop diagrams cancel at N$^2$LO, as do the contributions of the pion loops involving the low-energy constants $c_i$, i=1...4. In contrast to the NLO calculation however, the cancellation of loops at N$^2$LO is incomplete, yielding a non-vanishing contribution to the transition amplitude. Together with the one-pion exchange tree-level operators, the loop contributions provide the long-range part of the production operator. Finally, we discuss the phenomenological implications of these findings. In particular, we find that the amplitudes generated by the N$^2$LO pion loops yield contributions comparable in size with the most important phenomenological heavy-meson exchange amplitudes.

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Signatures of three-nucleon interactions in few-nucleon systems

Recent experimental results in three-body systems have unambiguously shown that calculations based only on nucleon-nucleon forces fail to accurately describe many experimental observables and one needs to include effects which are beyond the realm of the two-body potentials. This conclusion owes its significance to the fact that experiments and calculations can both be performed with a high accuracy. In this review, both theoretical and experimental achievements of the past decade will be underlined. Selected results will be presented. The discussion on the effects of the three-nucleon forces is, however, limited to the hadronic sector. It will be shown that despite the major successes in describing these seemingly simple systems, there are still clear discrepancies between data and the state-of-the-art calculations.

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The triton with long-range chiral N3LO three nucleon forces

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 the resulting three-nucleon force is explored and effects for the two-nucleon correlation function in the triton are investigated. Expectation values of the individual contributions to the three-nucleon force in the triton are found to be in the range from a few 100 keV to about 1 MeV. Our study demonstrates that the very complicated operator structure of the novel chiral three-nucleon forces can be successively implemented in three-nucleon Faddeev calculations.

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Signatures of the chiral two-pion exchange electromagnetic currents in the 2H and 3He photodisintegration reactions

The recently derived long-range two-pion exchange (TPE) contributions to the nuclear current operator which appear at next-to-leading order (NLO) of the chiral expansion are used to describe electromagnetic processes. We study their role in the photodisintegration of 2H and 3He and compare our predictions with experimental data. The bound and scattering states are calculated using five different parametrizations of the chiral next-to-next-to-leading order (N2LO) nucleon-nucleon (NN) potential which allows us to estimate the theoretical uncertainty at a given order in the chiral expansion. For some observables the results are very close to the predictions based on the AV18 NN potential and the current operator (partly) consistent with this force. In the most cases, the addition of long-range TPE currents improved the description of the experimental data.

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Two-Pion Exchange Currents in Photodisintegration of the Deuteron

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 important because, despite a lot of experience gained in the past, the consistency between two-nucleon forces, many-nucleon forces and the corresponding current operators has not been achieved yet. In this presentation we consider the recently derived long-range two-pion exchange (TPE) contributions to the nuclear current operator which appear at next-to leading order of the chiral expansion. These operators do not contain any free parameters. We study their role in the deuteron photodisintegration reaction and compare our predictions with experimental data. The bound and scattering states are calculated using five different chiral N2LO nucleon-nucleon (NN) potentials which allows to estimate the theoretical uncertainty at a given order in the chiral expansion. For some observables the results are very close to the reference predictions based on the AV18 NN potential and the current operator (partly) consistent with this force.

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Saturation of nuclear matter in effective field theory

The two- and three-nucleon interaction derived in chiral effective field theory at next-to-next-to-leading order is used to obtain the binding energy of nuclear matter. Saturation is found at a binding energy per particle E/A = -16.2 \pm 0.3 MeV and a Fermi momentum k_F = 1.30 \pm 0.03 fm^{-1}, where the uncertainty is due to the cut-off dependence of the two-nucleon interaction. The sensitivity of these values to the three-nucleon force is also studied.

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A new way to perform partial wave decompositions of few-nucleon forces

We formulate a general and exact method of partial wave decomposition (PWD) of any nucleon-nucleon (NN) potential and any three-nucleon (3N) force. The approach allows one to efficiently use symbolic algebra software to generate the interaction dependent part of the program code calculating the interaction. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach for the one-boson exchange BonnB potential, a recent nucleon-nucleon chiral force and the chiral two-pion-exchange three-nucleon force. In all cases very good agreement between the new and the traditional PWD is found. The automated PWD offered by the new approach is of the utmost importance in view of future applications of numerous chiral N3LO contributions to the 3N force in three nucleon calculations.

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The nucleon recoil effect in antikaon-deuteron scattering at threshold

We investigate the role of the nucleon recoil for antikaon-deuteron scattering using EFT. In particular, we show that the leading correction to the static term that appears at order $ξ^{1/2}$ (where $ξ=m_K/M_N$) cancels completely in the double scattering process. We calculate the higher order recoil corrections and study the pattern of convergence of the expansion method. We find that the recoil correction to the double scattering process is of order of 10-15% of the static contribution.

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Extraction of the strong neutron-proton mass difference from the charge symmetry breaking in pn-->d pi0

We perform a complete calculation of charge symmetry breaking effects for the reaction pn -> d pi0 at leading order in chiral perturbation theory. A new leading-order operator is included. From our analysis we extract δm_N^{str}, the strong contribution to the neutron-proton mass difference. The value obtained, δm_N^{str} = 1.5 \pm 0.8 (exp.) \pm 0.5 (th.) MeV, is consistent with the result based on the Cottingham sum rule. This agreement provides a non-trivial test of our current understanding of the chiral structure of QCD.

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p-Wave pion production from nucleon-nucleon collisions

We investigate p-wave pion production in nucleon-nucleon collisions up to next-to-next-to-leading order in chiral effective field theory. In particular, we show that it is possible to describe simultaneously the p-wave amplitudes in the $pn\to ppπ^-$, $pp\to pnπ^+$, $pp\to dπ^+$ channels by adjusting a single low-energy constant accompanying the short-range operator which is available at this order. This study provides a non-trivial test of the applicability of chiral effective field theory to reactions of the type $NN\to NNπ$.

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Regularization, renormalization and "peratization" in effective field theory for two nucleons

We discuss conceptual aspects of renormalization in the context of effective field theories for the two-nucleon system. It is shown that, contrary to widespread belief, renormalization scheme dependence of the scattering amplitude can only be eliminated up to the order the calculations are performed. We further consider an effective theory for an exactly solvable quantum mechanical model which possesses a long- and short-range interaction to simulate pionful effective field theory. We discuss the meaning of low-energy theorems in this model and demonstrate their validity in calculations with a finite cutoff $Λ$ as long as it is chosen of the order of the hard scale in the problem. Removing the cutoff by taking the limit $Λ\to \infty$ yields a finite result for the scattering amplitude but violates the low-energy theorems and is, therefore, not compatible with the effective field theory framework.

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The role of nucleon recoil in low-energy antikaon-deuteron scattering

The effect of the nucleon recoil for antikaon-deuteron scattering is investigated in the framework of effective field theory. In particular, we concentrate on the calculation of the nucleon recoil effect for the double-scattering process. It is shown that the leading correction to the static term that emerges at order xi^{1/2} with xi=M_K/m_N vanishes due to a complete cancellation of individually large contributions. The resulting recoil effect in this process is found to be of order of 10-15% as compared to the static term. We also briefly discuss the application of the method in the calculations of the multiple-scattering diagrams.

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