https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-020-00102-2
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Towards high-order calculations of three-nucleon scattering in chiral effective field theory
1
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Fakultät für Physik und Astronomie, Institut für Theoretische Physik II, 44780, Bochum, Germany
2
M. Smoluchowski Institute of Physics, Jagiellonian University, 30348, Kraków, Poland
3
Institut für Kernphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 64289, Darmstadt, Germany
4
Department of Physics, Faculty of Engineering, Kyushu Institute of Technology, Kitakyushu, 804-8550, Japan
5
Helmholtz-Institut für Strahlen- und Kernphysik and Bethe Center for Theoretical Physics, Universität Bonn, 53115, Bonn, Germany
6
Institut für Kernphysik, Institute for Advanced Simulation and Jülich Center for Hadron Physics, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425, Jülich, Germany
7
Tbilisi State University, 0186, Tbilisi, Georgia
* e-mail: evgeny.epelbaum@rub.de
Received:
9
July
2019
Accepted:
20
September
2019
Published online:
19
March
2020
We discuss the current status of chiral effective field theory in the three-nucleon sector and present selected results for nucleon–deuteron scattering observables based on semilocal momentum-space-regularized chiral two-nucleon potentials together with consistently regularized three-nucleon forces up to third chiral order. Using a Bayesian model for estimating truncation errors, the obtained results are found to provide a good description of the experimental data. We confirm our earlier findings that a high-precision description of nucleon–deuteron scattering data below pion production threshold will require the theory to be pushed to fifth chiral order. This conclusion is substantiated by an exploratory study of selected short-range contributions to the three-nucleon force at that order, which, as expected, are found to have significant effects on polarization observables at intermediate and high energies. We also outline the challenges that will need to be addressed in order to push the chiral expansion of three-nucleon scattering observables to higher orders.
© The Author(s), 2020
