Eur. Phys. J. A (2012) 48: 7
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2012-12007-8

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Parity-violating neutron spin rotation in hydrogen and deuterium

¹ Institute for Nuclear Studies, Department of Physics, The George Washington University, 20052, Washington, DC, USA
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of South Carolina, 29208, Columbia, SC, USA
³ Department of Physics, Duke University, 27708, Durham, NC, USA

^* e-mail: hgrie@gwu.edu

Received: 29 September 2011
Revised: 14 December 2011
Accepted: 17 December 2011
Published online: 26 January 2012

Abstract

We calculate the (parity-violating) spin-rotation angle of a polarized neutron beam through hydrogen and deuterium targets, using pionless effective field theory up to next-to-leading order. Our result is part of a program to obtain the five leading independent low-energy parameters that characterize hadronic parity violation from few-body observables in one systematic and consistent framework. The two spin-rotation angles provide independent constraints on these parameters. Our result for np spin rotation is , while for nd spin rotation we obtain , where the g ^(X-Y), in units of , are the presently unknown parameters in the leading-order parity-violating Lagrangian. Using naıve dimensional analysis to estimate the typical size of the couplings, we expect the signal for standard target densities to be for both hydrogen and deuterium targets. We find no indication that the nd observable is enhanced compared to the np one. All results are properly renormalized. An estimate of the numerical and systematic uncertainties of our calculations indicates excellent convergence. An appendix contains the relevant partial-wave projectors of the three-nucleon system.