Naturalness in Nuclear Effective Field Theories

Abstract

Nuclear effective field theories (EFTs) have been developed over the last quarter-century with considerable impact on the description of light and even medium-mass nuclei. At the core of any EFT is a systematic expansion of observables, which is usually obtained from a rule based on an assumption of naturalness. I discuss naturalness in the context of the relatively weak binding of nuclei, where discrete scale invariance plays a role in the emergence of complexity.

Comments: 22 pages, contribution to EPJA's topical issue "The tower of effective (field) theories and the emergence of nuclear phenomena"