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

TL;DR

This paper calculates neutral pion production off tritium and helium-3 nuclei using chiral effective field theory, testing the neutron amplitude predictions and estimating uncertainties from higher order effects.

Contribution

It provides the first leading one-loop order calculation of neutral pion photoproduction off three-nucleon bound states within chiral nuclear effective field theory.

Findings

The S-wave amplitude E_{0+} dependence on the neutron amplitude is analyzed.

Uncertainties from higher order corrections are estimated.

The results serve as a test of chiral perturbation theory predictions.

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.