The longitudinal response function of the deuteron in chiral effective field theory

TL;DR

This paper employs chiral effective field theory to predict the deuteron's longitudinal electromagnetic response, demonstrating accuracy within 10% in certain kinematic regions and showing good agreement with experimental data and other models.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed chiral EFT calculation of the deuteron response function, including cutoff variation analysis and comparison with experimental data and other theoretical models.

Findings

Chiral EFT predicts f_L within 10% accuracy near the quasi-free peak.

Results agree with Bonn potential predictions and experimental data.

The approach is valid up to final-state energies of 60 MeV.

Abstract

We use chiral effective field theory (EFT) to make predictions for the longitudinal electromagnetic response function of the deuteron, f_L, which is measured in d(e,e'N) reactions. In this case the impulse approximation gives the full chiral EFT result up to corrections that are of O(P^4) relative to leading. By varying the cutoff in the chiral EFT calculations between 0.6 and 1 GeV we conclude that the calculation is accurate to better than 10 % for values of q^2 within 4 fm^{-2} of the quasi-free peak, up to final-state energies E_{np}=60 MeV. In these regions chiral EFT is in reasonable agreement with predictions for f_L obtained using the Bonn potential. We also find good agreement with existing experimental data on f_L, albeit in a more restricted kinematic domain.