To obtain an understanding of the structure and reactions of nuclear systems from first principles has been a long-standing goal of nuclear physics. In this respect, few- and many-body systems provide a unique laboratory for studying nuclear interactions. During the past decades, the development of accurate representations of the nuclear force has undergone substantial progress. Particular emphasis has been devoted to chiral effective field theory (EFT), a low-energy effective representation of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Within chiral EFT, many studies have been carried out dealing with the construction of both the nucleon-nucleon ($N\!N$) and three-nucleon ($3N$) interactions. The aim of the present article is to give a detailed overview of the chiral interaction models that are local in configuration space, and show recent results for nuclear systems obtained by employing these local chiral forces.
We summarize the current status of our understanding of nuclear forces based upon chiral symmetry--an idea that was advocated by Gerry Brown already several decades ago.
We derive the leading contribution to the four-nucleon force within the framework of chiral effective field theory. It is governed by the exchange of pions and the lowest-order nucleon-nucleon contact interaction and includes effects due to the nonlinear pion-nucleon couplings and the pion self interactions constrained by the chiral symmetry of QCD. The resulting four-nucleon force does not contain any unknown parameters and can be tested in few- and many-nucleon studies.
We employ a variety of ab initio methods including Faddeev-Yakubovsky equations, No-Core Configuration Interaction Approach, Coupled-Cluster Theory and In-Medium Similarity Renormalization Group to perform a comprehensive analysis of the nucleon-deuteron elastic and breakup reactions and selected properties of light and medium-mass nuclei up to 48Ca using the recently constructed semilocal coordinate-space regularized chiral nucleon-nucleon potentials. We compare the results with those based on selected phenomenological and chiral EFT two-nucleon potentials, discuss the convergence pattern of …
We optimize the nucleon-nucleon interaction from chiral effective field theory at next-to-next- to-leading order. The resulting new chiral force NNLOopt yields χ^2 \approx 1 per degree of freedom for laboratory energies below approximately 125 MeV. In the A = 3, 4 nucleon systems, the contributions of three-nucleon forces are smaller than for previous parametrizations of chiral interactions. We use NNLOopt to study properties of key nuclei and neutron matter, and demonstrate that many aspects of nuclear structure can be understood in terms of this nucleon-nucleon interaction, without explicitl…
We investigate single-particle properties in infinite nuclear matter using a variety of interactions. One of the focal points is to study the impact of chiral three-nucleon forces on the nucleon self-energy and related quantities, such as spectral function and momentum distribution. We also present results for pairing correlations in nuclear matter. We find characteristic and systematic differences between the predictions obtained with the (softer) chiral interactions and those based on one-boson-exchange or phenomenology.
We derive density-dependent corrections to the in-medium nucleon-nucleon interaction from the leading-order chiral three-nucleon force. To this order there are six distinct one-loop diagrams contributing to the in-medium nucleon-nucleon scattering T-matrix. Analytic expressions are presented for each of these in both isospin-symmetric nuclear matter as well as nuclear matter with a small isospin asymmetry. The results are combined with the low-momentum nucleon-nucleon potential V(low-k) to obtain an effective density-dependent interaction suitable for nuclear structure calculations. The in-med…
We perform calculations for the binding energies and low-lying levels of ${}^{10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22}C$ nuclei starting from the chiral $N3LO$ nucleon-nucleon potential within the framework of the Hybrid Multideterminant scheme. The calculations are restricted to 4 major harmonic oscillator shells, via the Lee-Suzuki renormalization scheme. The results are compared with the experimental data.
We solve the ab initio no-core shell model (NCSM) in the complete Nmax = 8 basis for A = 7 and A = 8 nuclei with two-nucleon and three-nucleon interactions derived within chiral effective field theory (EFT). We find that including the chiral EFT three-nucleon interaction in the Hamiltonian improves overall good agreement with experimental binding energies, excitation spectra, transitions and electromagnetic moments. We predict states that exhibit sensitivity to including the chiral EFT three-nucleon interaction but are not yet known experimentally.
We investigate the importance of the three-nucleon (3N) force contact terms in elastic nucleon-deuteron (Nd) scattering by applying the N$^4$LO$^+$ chiral semi-local momentum space (SMS) regularized nucleon-nucleon (NN) chiral potential supplemented by N$^2$LO and all subleading N$^4$LO three-nucleon force (3NF) contact terms. Strength parameters of the contact terms were obtained by least squares fitting of theoretical predictions to cross section and analyzing powers data at three energies of the impinging nucleon. Although the N$^3$LO contributions to the 3N force were completely neglected,…
We calculate the complete $T$ matrices of the elastic nucleon-nucleon scattering up to third order in SU(3) heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory. The phase shifts with orbital angular momentum $L\geq 2$ and the mixing angles with $J\geq 2$ are evaluated by using low-energy constants that were extracted from the meson-baryon analysis. It turns out that our prediction is consistent with the empirical phase shifts and mixing angles data, and also the results from SU(2) heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory. The errors from the low-energy constants are analyzed in detail. Our calculation prov…
We outline the structure of the nuclear force in the framework of chiral effective field theory of QCD and review recent applications to processes involving few nucleons.
We investigate the roles of chiral three-nucleon force (3NF) in nucleon-nucleus elastic scattering, using the standard framework based on the Brueckner-Hartree-Fock method for nuclear matter and the $g$-matrix folding model for the nucleon-nucleus scattering. In nuclear matter, chiral 3NF at NNLO level (mainly the 2$π$-exchange diagram) makes the single particle potential less attractive for the singlet-even channel and more absorptive for the triplet channels. The single-particle potential calculated from chiral two-nucleon force (2NF) at N$^{3}$LO level is found to be close to that from Bonn…
The properties of nuclear matter are studied using state-of-the-art nucleon-nucleon forces up to fifth order in chiral effective field theory. The equations of state of symmetric nuclear matter and pure neutron matter are calculated in the framework of the Brueckner-Hartree-Fock theory. We discuss in detail the convergence pattern of the chiral expansion and the regulator dependence of the calculated equations of state and provide an estimation of the truncation uncertainty. For all employed values of the regulator, the fifth-order chiral two-nucleon potential is found to generate nuclear satu…
We construct the leading order hyperon-nucleon potential in chiral effective field theory. We show that a good description of the available data is possible and discuss briefly further improvements of this scheme.
Present day chiral nucleon-nucleon potentials up to N3LO and three nucleon forces at N2LO are used to analyze nucleon-deuteron radiative capture at deuteron lab energies below E_d= 100 MeV. The differential cross section and the deuteron analyzing powers A_y(d) and A_{yy} are presented and compared to data. The theoretical predictions are obtained in the momentum-space Faddeev approach using the nuclear electromagnetic current operator with exchange currents introduced via the Siegert theorem. The chiral forces provide the same quality of data description as a combination of the two-nucleon AV…
We study the perturbative renormalizability of chiral two pion exchange in nucleon-nucleon scattering for p- and d-waves within the effective field theory approach. The one pion exchange potential is fully iterated at the leading order in the expansion, a choice generating a consistent and well-defined power counting that we explore in detail. The results show that perturbative chiral two pion exchange reproduces the data up to a center-of-mass momentum of k_cm ~300 MeV at NNLO and that the effective field theory expansion convergences up to k_cm ~ 350 MeV.
We derive the long-range contributions to the tree-nucleon force at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order in the chiral expansion. We give both momentum and coordinate space representations.
We present the first study of pairing in nuclei including three-nucleon forces. We perform systematic calculations of the odd-even mass staggering generated using a microscopic pairing interaction at first order in chiral low-momentum interactions. Significant repulsive contributions from the leading chiral three-nucleon forces are found. Two- and three-nucleon interactions combined account for approximately 70% of the experimental pairing gaps, which leaves room for self-energy and induced interaction effects that are expected to be overall attractive in nuclei.
Realistic nuclear potentials, derived within chiral perturbation theory, are a major breakthrough in modern nuclear structure theory, since they provide a direct link between nuclear physics and its underlying theory, namely the QCD. As a matter of fact, chiral potentials are tailored on the low-energy regime of nuclear structure physics, and chiral perturbation theory provides on the same footing two-nucleon forces as well as many-body ones. This feature fits well with modern advances in ab-initio methods and realistic shell-model. Here, we will review recent nuclear structure calculations, b…
The chiral soliton model including pi, rho, omega mesons is extended for the case when the scalar - isoscalar sigma meson has an anomalous dimension - d. The form factor of the sigma - nucleon interaction calculated and to be found not highly sensitive to the value of d.
We apply the relativistic chiral SU(3) Lagrangian density to kaon-nucleon scattering imposing constraints from the pion-nucleon s- and p-wave threshold parameters at chiral order $Q^2$. The s and u channel decouplet baryon exchange is included explicitly and is found to play a crucial role in understanding the empirical s- and p-wave nuclear kaon dynamics quantitatively.
We analyse the interplay between nucleon-nucleon potentials deduced from chiral perturbation theory and a coarse grained representation of the short distance interactions by delta-shells potentials below a certain cut-off distance. While we find that the number of parameters is greatly reduced when Chiral Two Pion Exchange contributions are included we also observe that discerning the necessity of improvements on the interaction requires a detailed analysis of all error sources. Our points are best illustrated by computing deuteron static properties as well as electromagnetic form factors afte…
We demonstrate a computational scheme which drastically decreases the required time to get theoretical predictions based on chiral two- and three-nucleon forces for observables in three-nucleon continuum. For a three-nucleon force containing N short-range terms all workload is reduced to solving N+1 Faddeev-type integral equations. That done, computation of observables for any combination of strengths of the contact terms is done in a flash. We demonstrate on example of the elastic nucleon-deuteron scattering observables the high precision of the proposed emulator and its capability to reprodu…
We study the nucleon-nucleon interaction in a chiral constituent quark model by using the resonating group method, convenient for treating the interaction between composite particles. The calculated phase shifts for the 3S1 and 1S0 channels show the presence of a strong repulsive core due to the combined effect of the quark interchange and the spin-flavour structure of the effective quark-quark interaction. Such a symmetry structure stems from the pseudoscalar meson exchange between the quarks and is a consequence of the spontaneous breaking of the chiral symmetry. We perform single and couple…
By solving the Schrödinger equation for the three-quark system in the hyperspherical harmonic approach, we have studied the low energy part of the nucleon and $Δ$ spectra using a quark-quark interaction which reproduces the nucleon-nucleon phenomenology. The quark-quark hamiltonian considered includes, besides the usual one-gluon exchange, pion and sigma exchanges generated by the chiral symmetry breaking. The baryonic spectrum obtained is reasonable and the resulting wave function gives consistency to the ansatz used in the two baryon system.
We have studied neutron-rich carbon isotopes in terms of the shell model employing a realistic effective hamiltonian derived from the chiral N3LOW nucleon-nucleon potential. The single-particle energies and effective two-body interaction have been both determined within the framework of the time-dependent degenerate linked-diagram perturbation theory. The calculated results are in very good agreement with the available experimental data, providing a sound description of this isotopic chain toward the neutron dripline. The correct location of the dripline is reproduced.
We study perturbativeness of chiral nuclear forces in the $^3P_0$ channel. In previous works, the focus has been on one-pion exchange, and the applicable window of perturbative pion exchanges has been shown to span from threshold to the center-of-mass momentum $k \simeq$ 180 MeV. We will examine, instead, whether cancellation of short and long-range parts can sufficiently soften the $^3P_0$ chiral force to make it more amenable to perturbation theory. The result is encouraging, as the combined $^3P_0$ force is shown to be perturbative up to $k \simeq$ 280 MeV, covering many nuclear-structure c…
The central two-pion exchange NN potential at large distances is studied in the framework of relativistic chiral symmetry and related directly to the nucleon scalar form factor, which describes the mass density of its pion cloud. This relationship is well supported by phenomenology and allows the dependence of the asymptotic potential on the nucleon mass to be assessed. Results in the heavy baryon limit are about 25% larger than those corresponding to the empirical nucleon mass in the region of physical interest. This indicates that it is very important to keep this mass finite in precise desc…
We present an exploratory study consisting in the formulation of a relativistic quantum mechanics to describe the few-nucleon system at low energy, starting from the quantum field theoretical chiral Lagrangian involving pions and nucleons. To this aim we construct a Bakamjian-Thomas mass operator and perform a truncation of the Fock space which respects at each stage the relativistic covariance. Such truncation is justified, at sufficiently low energy, in the framework of a systematic chiral expansion. As an illustration we discuss the bound state observables and low-energy phaseshifts of the …
The main progress in the field of nucleon-nucleon (NN) potentials, which we have seen in recent years, is the construction of some very quantitative (high-quality/high-precision) NN potentials. These potentials will serve as excellent input for microscopic nuclear structure calculations and will allow for a systematic investigation of off-shell effects. After this enormous quantitative work, it is now time to re-think the NN problem in fundamental terms. We need a derivation of the nuclear force which observes Lorentz invariance and the symmetries of QCD.
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 inves…
We compute the binding energies, radii, and densities for selected medium-mass nuclei within coupled-cluster theory and employ the "bare" chiral nucleon-nucleon interaction at order N3LO. We find rather well-converged results in model spaces consisting of 15 oscillator shells, and the doubly magic nuclei 40Ca, 48Ca, and the exotic 48Ni are underbound by about 1 MeV per nucleon within the CCSD approximation. The binding-energy difference between the mirror nuclei 48Ca and 48Ni is close to theoretical mass table evaluations. Our computation of the one-body density matrices and the corresponding …
We apply improved nucleon-nucleon potentials up to fifth order in chiral effective field theory, along with a new analysis of the theoretical truncation errors, to study nucleon-deuteron (Nd) scattering and selected low-energy observables in 3H, 4He, and 6Li. Calculations beyond second order differ from experiment well outside the range of quantified uncertainties, providing truly unambiguous evidence for missing three-nucleon forces within the employed framework. The sizes of the required three-nucleon force contributions agree well with expectations based on Weinberg's power counting. We ide…
We estimate four-nucleon force effects between different 4He wave functions by calculating the expectation values of four-nucleon potentials which were recently derived within the framework of chiral effective field theory. We find that the four-nucleon force is attractive for the wave functions with a totally symmetric momentum part. The additional binding energy provided by the long-ranged part of the four-nucleon force is of the order of a few hundred keV.
We consider a symmetry-preserving approach to the nucleon-nucleon scattering problem in the framework of the higher-derivative formulation of baryon chiral perturbation theory. Within this framework the leading-order amplitude is calculated by solving renormalizable equations and corrections are taken into account perturbatively.
We discuss the application of the chiral N3LO forces to three-nucleon reactions and point to the challenges which will have to be addressed. Present approaches to solve three-nucleon Faddeev equations are based on a partial-wave decomposition. A rapid increase of the number of terms contributing to the chiral three-nucleon force when increasing the order of the chiral expansion from N2LO to N3LO forced us to develop a fast and effective method of automatized partial wave decomposition. At low energies of the incoming nucleon below about 20MeV, where only a limited number of partial waves is re…
We calculate properties of A=6 system using the accurate charge-dependent nucleon-nucleon (NN) potential at fourth order of chiral perturbation theory. By application of the ab initio no-core shell model (NCSM) and a variational calculation in the harmonic oscillator basis with basis size up to 16 hbarOmega we obtain the 6Li binding energy of 28.5(5) MeV and a converged excitation spectrum. Also, we calculate properties of 10B using the same NN potential in a basis space of up to 8 hbarOmega. Our results are consistent with results obtained by standard accurate NN potentials and demonstrate a …
The three-nucleon (NNN) interaction derived within the chiral effective field theory at the next-to-next-to-leading order (N2LO) is regulated with a function depending on the magnitude of the momentum transfer. The regulated NNN interaction is then local in the coordinate space, which is advantages for some many-body techniques. Matrix elements of the local chiral NNN interaction are evaluated in a three-nucleon basis. Using the ab initio no-core shell model (NCSM) the NNN matrix elements are employed in 3H and 4He bound-state calculations.
After a brief review on the status of few--nucleon studies based on conventional nuclear forces, we sketch the concepts of the effective field theory approach constrained by chiral symmetry and its application to nuclear forces. Then first results for few--nucleon observables are discussed.
We derive the leading one-loop contribution to the one-pion exchange and short-range two-nucleon electromagnetic current operator in the framework of chiral effective field theory. The derivation is carried out using the method of unitary transformation. Explicit results for the current and charge densities are given in momentum and coordinate space.
The contribution of a chiral three-nucleon force to the strength of an effective spin-orbit coupling is estimated. We first construct a reduced two-body interaction by folding one-nucleon degrees of freedom of the three-nucleon force in nuclear matter. The spin-orbit strength is evaluated by a Scheerbaum factor obtained by the $G$-matrix calculation in nuclear matter with the two-nucleon interaction plus the reduced two-nucleon interaction. The problem of the insufficiency of modern realistic two-nucleon interactions to account for the empirical spin-orbit strength is resolved. It is also indi…
We study the perturbative renormalizability of chiral two pion exchange for the singlet and triplet channels within effective field theory, provided that the one pion exchange piece of the interaction has been fully iterated. We determine the number of counterterms/subtractions needed in order to obtain finite results when the cut-off is removed, resulting in three counterterms for the singlet channel and six for the triplet. The results show that chiral two pion exchange can be treated perturbatively up to a center-of-mass momentum of k ~ 200-300 MeV in the singlet channel and k ~ 300-400 in …
Production of p-wave pions in nucleon-nucleon collisions is studied according to an improved power counting that embodies the constraints of chiral symmetry. Contributions from the first two non-vanishing orders are calculated. We find reasonable convergence and agreement with data for a spin-triplet cross section in $pp\to ppπ^0$,with no free parameters. Agreement with existing data for a spin-singlet cross section in $pp\to pnπ^+$ constrains a short-range operator shown recently to contribute significantly to the three-nucleon potential.
We show how to renormalize chiral two pion exchange perturbatively if one pion exchange has already been fully iterated at leading order. This particular choice corresponds to the implementation of the counting proposal of Nogga, Timmermans and van Kolck at subleading orders. We illustrate why the perturbative treatment of the two pion exchange contributions is mandatory in order to avoid certain inconsistencies in Weinberg's counting. In addition, renormalizability implies modifications of the power counting which we explore for the particular case of the singlet channel.
We report on recent progress achieved in calculating various few-nucleon low-energy observables from effective field theory. Our discussion includes scattering and bound states in the 2N, 3N and 4N systems and isospin violating effects in the 2N system. We also establish a link between the nucleon-nucleon potential derived in chiral effective field theory and various modern high-precision potentials.
We discuss the relevance of the scalar modes appearing in chiral theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking such as the NJL model for nuclear matter studies. We show that it depends on the relative role of chiral symmetry breaking and confinement in the nucleon mass origin. It is only in the case of a mixed origin that nuclear matter can be stable and reach saturation. We describe models of nucleon structure where this balance is achieved. We show how chiral constarints and confinement modify the QCD sum rules for the mass evolution in nuclear matter.
Nucleon-nucleon (NN) forces from chiral perturbation theory at next-to-leading (NLO) and next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) are applied to systems with two, three and four nucleons. At NNLO, we consider two versions of the chiral potential which differ in the strength of the two-pion-exchange (TPE) but describe two nucleon observables equally well. The NNLO potential leads to unphysical deeply bound states in the low partial waves and effects of the 3N forces, which appear first at this order, are expected to be large. We provide arguments for a reduction of the TPE potential and introduce t…
A framework to evolve three-nucleon (3N) forces in a plane-wave basis with the Similarity Renormalization Group (SRG) is presented and applied to consistent interactions derived from chiral effective field theory at next-to-next-to-leading order (N$^2$LO). We demonstrate the unitarity of the SRG transformation, show the decoupling of low and high momenta, and present the first investigation of universality in chiral 3N forces at low resolution scales. The momentum-space-evolved 3N forces are consistent and can be directly combined with the standard SRG-evolved two-nucleon (NN) interactions for…
A recently proposed covariant chiral effective field theory approach is applied to study strangeness $S=-1$ hyperon-nucleon interactions at leading order. 12 low energy constants are introduced by Lorentz invariance, which is different from the heavy baryon approach, where only five appear. The Kadyshevsky equation is employed to iterate the chiral potentials. A quite satisfactory description of the 36 hyperon-nucleon scattering data is obtained with $χ^2\simeq 17$, which is comparable with the next-to-leading order heavy baryon approach. The results hint at a more efficient way to construct t…
The truncation errors in equations of state (EOSs) of nuclear matter derived from the chiral nucleon-nucleon ($NN$) potentials at different expansion orders are analyzed by a Bayesian model. These EOSs are expanded as functions of a dimensionless parameter, $Q$, which is determined by Fermi momentum, $k_F$ and breakdown scale, $Λ_b$. The degree-of-belief (DoB) intervals predicted by the chiral effective field theory are calculated within the corresponding expansion coefficients and the specific prior probability distribution functions in terms of Bayes theorem. The truncation errors of EOSs, g…
We study nuclear physics in the chiral limit ($m_u$, $m_d=0$) in which the pion mass vanishes. We find that the deuteron mass is changed little, but that P--wave nucleon--nucleon scattering volumes are infinite. This motivates an investigation of the possibilities that there could be a two--nucleon $^3P_0$ bound state, and that the nuclear matter ground state is likely to be a condensed state of nucleons paired to those quantum numbers. However, the short distance repulsion in the nucleon--nucleon potential is not affected by the chiral limit and prevents such new chiral possibilities. Thus th…
We present a calculation of the three complex form factors parametrizing the nucleon to Delta transition matrix element in the framework of chiral effective field theory with explicit Delta degrees of freedom. The interplay between short and long range physics is discussed and estimates for systematic uncertainties due to higher order effect are given.
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. Meißner, 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 able to significantly reduce finite-cutoff artefacts by using an appropriate regularization in coordinate space which maintain…
The 1S0 pairing gap in isospin-symmetric nuclear matter and finite nuclei is investigated using the chiral nucleon-nucleon potential at the N3LO order in the two-body sector, and the N2LO order in the three-body sector. To include realistic nuclear forces in RHB (Relativistic Hartree Bolgoliubov) calculations we rely on a separable form of the pairing interaction adjusted to the bare nuclear force. The separable pairing force is applied to the analysis of pairing properties for several isotopic and isotonic chains of spherical nuclei.
After a brief review of the role three-nucleon forces play in the few-nucleon systems, the chiral-perturbation-theory approach to these forces is discussed. Construction of the (nominal) leading- and subleading-order Born terms and pion-rescattering graphs contributing to two-pion-exchange three-nucleon forces is reviewed, and comparisons are made of the types of such forces that are used today. It is demonstrated that the short-range $c$-term of the Tucson-Melbourne force is unnatural in terms of power counting and should be dropped. The class of two-pion-exchange three-nucleon forces then be…
We study the nucleon-nucleon interaction up to next-to-next-to-leading order using time-ordered perturbation theory in the framework of manifestly Lorentz-invariant chiral effective field theory. We present the two-pion exchange contribution at one-loop level, which is consistent with the corresponding non-relativistic expressions in the large-nucleon-mass limit. Using the Born series truncated at one-loop order, we calculate the phase shifts and mixing angles of the partial waves with the angular momentum $l\geq 2$. Comparing with the results of non-relativistic formulation, we find an improv…
