arXiv:2609.04615·v1·Nuclear Theory

Percent-Level Prediction of the Deuteron Magnetic Polarizability

Rishi Cherukuri · Jiunn-Wei Chen · Xiangdong Ji

Abstract

Working through next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) accuracy in pionless effective field theory, we compute the isovector magnetic-dipole contribution to the scalar deuteron magnetic polarizability. The polarizability follows from detailed balance and a dispersion integral with the two magnetic current counter-terms fixed by the thermal $n p \to d γ$ rate. The conventional $ρ$ and $Z$ expansion schemes differ by $12.3%$ at next-to-leading order but agree to $0.165%$ at NNLO, resulting an apparent scheme dependence and supplying an independent convergence diagnostic. We obtain $β_{M 0}^{(M 1_{v})} = 0.0789 \pm 0.0010 fm^{3}$ , a $1.3%$ uncertainty, compared with $4.9%$ previously.

Comments: 10 pages, 1 figure