Power Counting and Wilsonian Renormalization in Nuclear Effective Field Theory

Effective field theories are the most general tool for the description of low energy phenomena. They are universal and systematic: they can be formulated for any low energy systems we can think of and offer a clear guide on how to calculate predictions with reliable error estimates, a feature that is called power counting. These properties can be easily understood in Wilsonian renormalization, in which effective field theories are the low energy renormalization group evolution of a more fundamental ---perhaps unknown or unsolvable--- high energy theory. In nuclear physics they provide the possibility of a theoretically sound derivation of nuclear forces without having to solve quantum chromodynamics explicitly. However there is the problem of how to organize calculations within nuclear effective field theory: the traditional knowledge about power counting is perturbative but nuclear physics is not. Yet power counting can be derived in Wilsonian renormalization and there is already a fairly good understanding of how to apply these ideas to non-perturbative phenomena and in particular to nuclear physics. Here we review a few of these ideas, explain power counting in two-nucleon scattering and reactions with external probes and hint at how to extend the present analysis beyond the two-body problem.Comment: Contribution to the IJMPE special issue on "Effective Field Theories in Nuclear Physics". This update includes the corrections and changes of the published versio

Heavy hadron molecules in effective field theory: the emergence of exotic nuclear landscapes

Heavy hadron molecules were first theorized from a crude analogy with the deuteron and the nuclear forces binding it, a conjecture which was proven to be on the right track after the discovery of the $X(3872)$. However, this analogy with nuclear physics has not been seriously exploited beyond a few calculations in the two- and three-body sectors, leaving a great number of possible theoretical consequences unexplored. Here we show that nuclear and heavy hadron effective field theories are formally identical: using a suitable notation, there is no formal difference between these two effective field theories. For this, instead of using the standard heavy superfield notation, we have written the heavy hadron interactions directly in terms of the light quark degrees of freedom. We give a few examples of how to exploit this analogy, e.g. the calculation of the two-pion exchange diagrams. Yet the most relevant application of the present idea is the conjecture of exotic nuclear landscapes, i.e. the possibility of few heavy hadron bound states with characteristics similar to those of the standard nuclei.Comment: Prepared for the special issue of "The tower of effective (field) theories and the emergence of nuclear phenomena"; 14 pages, 3 tables and 2 figures; corresponds with published versio

Heavy Baryon-Antibaryon Molecules in Effective Field Theory

We discuss the effective field theory description of bound states composed of a heavy baryon and antibaryon. This framework is a variation of the ones already developed for heavy meson-antimeson states to describe the $X(3872)$ or the $Z_c$ and $Z_b$ resonances. We consider the case of heavy baryons for which the light quark pair is in S-wave and we explore how heavy quark spin symmetry constrains the heavy baryon-antibaryon potential. The one pion exchange potential mediates the low energy dynamics of this system. We determine the relative importance of pion exchanges, in particular the tensor force. We find that in general pion exchanges are probably non-perturbative for the $\Sigma_Q \bar{\Sigma}_Q$, $\Sigma_Q^* \bar{\Sigma}_Q$ and $\Sigma_Q^* \bar{\Sigma}_Q^*$ systems, while for the $\Xi_Q' \bar{\Xi}_Q'$, $\Xi_Q^* \bar{\Xi}_Q'$ and $\Xi_Q^* \bar{\Xi}_Q^*$ cases they are perturbative If we assume that the contact-range couplings of the effective field theory are saturated by the exchange of vector mesons, we can estimate for which quantum numbers it is more probable to find a heavy baryonium state. The most probable candidates to form bound states are the isoscalar $\Lambda_Q \bar{\Lambda}_Q$, $\Sigma_Q \bar{\Sigma}_Q$, $\Sigma_Q^* \bar{\Sigma}_Q$ and $\Sigma_Q^* \bar{\Sigma}_Q^*$ and the isovector $\Lambda_Q \bar{\Sigma}_Q$ and $\Lambda_Q \bar{\Sigma}_Q^*$ systems, both in the hidden-charm and hidden-bottom sectors. Their doubly-charmed and -bottom counterparts ($\Lambda_Q {\Lambda}_Q$, $\Lambda_Q {\Sigma}_Q^{(*)}$, $\Sigma_Q^{(*)} {\Sigma}_Q^{(*)}$) are also good candidates for binding.Comment: 38 pages, 1 figure, 12 tables; extended discussion on the most probable molecular heavy baryon-antibaryon states to bind; corresponds to published versio