Two-Body Triton Photodisintegration and Wigner-SU(4) Symmetry

TL;DR

This paper calculates the two-body triton photodisintegration cross section and polarization asymmetry using pionless EFT, demonstrating good agreement with experimental data and exploring the role of Wigner-SU(4) symmetry in these processes.

Contribution

The study provides the first NNLO calculations of the triton photodisintegration cross section and polarization asymmetry within pionless EFT, highlighting the significance of Wigner-SU(4) symmetry in nuclear reactions.

Findings

Good agreement with experimental cross section data.

Polarization asymmetry matches experimental values.

Wigner-SU(4) symmetry effectively describes two-body triton photodisintegration.

Abstract

We calculate the two-body triton photodisintegration cross section as a function of photon energy to next-to-next-to leading order (NNLO) in pionless effective field theory (EFT($\pi \!\!/$)) and show good agreement with experiment. In addition we calculate the polarization asymmetry $R_C=-0.441(15)$ in cold neutron-deuteron capture to NNLO in EFT($\pi \!\!/$), in agreement with the experimental value of $R_C=-0.42\pm 0.03$ [M. W. Konijnenberg et al. in Phys. Lett. B 205, 215 (1988)]. We also assess the dependence of $R_C$ on different fits of the two-nucleon magnetic currents. Finally, we consider the impact of Wigner-SU(4) symmetry and demonstrate that starting from the Wigner-SU(4) symmetric limit and including perturbative corrections to the breaking of Wigner-SU(4) symmetry does a good job of describing two-body triton photodisintegration.