Neutral pion photoproduction off 3H and 3He in chiral perturbation theory

Abstract

We calculate electromagnetic neutral pion production off three-nucleon bound states (3H, 3He) at threshold to leading one-loop order in the framework of chiral nuclear effective field theory. In addition, we analyze the dependence of the nuclear S-wave amplitude E_{0+} on the elementary neutron amplitude E_{0+}^{pi0 n} which in the case of 3He provides a stringent test of the prediction based on chiral perturbation theory. Uncertainties from higher order corrections are estimated.

Comments: 6 pages, 3 figures, version accepted for publication in Phys. Lett. B, improved discussion of higher-order corrections, results unchanged