Chiral perturbation theory for electroweak reactions on deuterium

Abstract

I summarize two recent applications of chiral perturbation theory to electromagnetic reactions on deuterium: elastic electron-deuteron scattering, and Compton scattering on deuterium. Both calculations have now been carried out to three orders in the chiral expansion. The expansion shows good convergence and is able to reproduce data for q < 600 MeV in e-d and for omega=55-95 MeV in gamma-d. These results demonstrate that ChiPT can be used to reliably compute operators and wave functions for low-momentum-transfer reactions in light nuclear systems.

Comments: 10 pages, 6 figures. Write-up of invited talk at INT Workshop on "Nuclear Forces and the Quantum Many-Body Problem", October 4-8, 2004