Probing the effectiveness: chiral perturbation theory calculations of low-energy electromagnetic reactions on deuterium

I summarize three recent calculations of electromagnetic reactions on deuterium in chiral perturbation theory. All of these calculations were carried out to O(Q^4), i.e. next-to-next-to-leading order. The reactions discussed here are: elastic electron-deuteron scattering, Compton scattering on deuterium, and the photoproduction of neutral pions from deuterium at threshold.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures. Contribution to conference on "Mesons and Light Nuclei". To appear in the proceeding

Recent results in chiral effective field theory for the NN system

I describe recent progress towards a theory of the NN force which captures the consequences of QCD's chiral symmetry and the pattern of its breaking, and is formulated as an expansion in a ratio of low and high mass scales, M_{lo}/M_{hi}. This "chiral effective field theory" of the NN system is a firm foundation for explorations of nuclear structure and reactions that are grounded in QCD's low-energy symmetries. While calculations that use a ChiPT expansion for the NN potential have proven very successful, they can only be used with a narrow range of momentum-space cutoffs, which leaves the expansion parameter for observable quantities somewhat murky. Here we seek a truly systematic effective field theory for the NN amplitude, that is manifestly renormalization-group invariant at each order in a demonstrably perturbative expansion.Comment: Invited talk at the 7th International Workshop on Chiral Dynamics, August 6-10, 2012, Jefferson Lab, Newport News, VA. To appear in the proceedings. 12 pages, 5 figure

The nucleon-nucleon system in chiral effective theory

I discuss the conditions under which the application of chiral perturbation theory to the NN potential gives reliable results for NN scattering phase shifts. ChiPT also yields a convergent expansion for the deuteron charge operator. For cutoffs < 1 GeV, this produces precise predictions for deuterium's quadrupole and charge form factors in the range Q^2 < 0.25 GeV^2.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Contribution to Proceedings of "12th International Conference on Meson-Nucleon Physics and the Structure of the Nucleon", Williamsburg, VA, May 31-June 4, 201

Electron-deuteron scattering in a relativistic theory of hadrons

We review a three-dimensional formalism that provides a systematic way to include relativistic effects including relativistic kinematics, the effects of negative-energy states, and the boosts of the two-body system in calculations of two-body bound-states. We then explain how to construct a conserved current within this relativistic three-dimensional approach. This general theoretical framework is specifically applied to electron-deuteron scattering both in impulse approximation and when the $\rho \pi \gamma$ meson-exchange current is included. The experimentally-measured quantities $A$, $B$, and $T_{20}$ are calculated over the kinematic range that is probed in Jefferson Lab experiments. The role of both negative-energy states and meson retardation appears to be small in the region of interest.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, uses BoxedEPS.tex, lamuphys.sty, bibnorm.sty. To appear in the proceedings of the Workshop on Electron-Nucleus Scattering held at the Elba International Physics Center, June 199

Properties of Lithium-11 and Carbon-22 at leading order in halo effective field theory

We study the $^{11}\mathrm{Li}$ and $^{22}\mathrm{C}$ nuclei at leading order (LO) in halo effective field theory (Halo EFT). Using the value of the $^{22}\mathrm{C}$ rms matter radius deduced in Ref. [1] as an input in a LO calculation, we simultaneously constrained the values of the two-neutron (2$n$) separation energy of $^{22}\mathrm{C}$ and the virtual-state energy of the $^{20}\mathrm{C}-$neutron system (hereafter denoted $^{21}$C). The 1$-\sigma$ uncertainty of the input rms matter radius datum, along with the theory error estimated from the anticipated size of the higher-order terms in the Halo EFT expansion, gave an upper bound of about 100 keV for the 2$n$ separation energy. We also study the electric dipole excitation of 2$n$ halo nuclei to a continuum state of two neutrons and the core at LO in Halo EFT. We first compare our results with the $^{11}\mathrm{Li}$ data from a Coulomb dissociation experiment and obtain good agreement within the theoretical uncertainty of a LO calculation. We then obtain the low-energy spectrum of $B(E1)$ of this transition at several different values of the 2$n$ separation energy of $^{22}\mathrm{C}$ and the virtual-state energy of $^{21}\mathrm{C}$. Our predictions can be compared to the outcome of an ongoing experiment on the Coulomb dissociation of $^{22}\mathrm{C}$ to obtain tighter constraints on the two- and three-body energies in the $^{22}\mathrm{C}$ system.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; Contribution to the 21st International Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physic

Effects of Inhomogeneity on the Causal Entropic prediction of Lambda

The causal entropic principle aims to predict the unexpectedly small value of the cosmological constant Lambda using a weighting by entropy increase on causal diamonds. The original work assumed a purely isotropic and homogeneous cosmology. But even the level of inhomogeneity observed in our universe forces reconsideration of certain arguments about entropy production. In particular, we must consider an ensemble of causal diamonds associated with one cosmology, and we can no longer immediately discard entropy production in the far future of the universe. Depending on our choices for a probability measure and our treatment of black hole evaporation, the prediction for Lambda may be left intact or dramatically altered.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures. V2: appearing in Phys Rev. D, including additional discussion of generic late-time entropy sources and a more general calculation of their effects on the prediction for \Lambda, along with an updated figur