Relativistic chiral nuclear forces: status and prospects

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development of relativistic chiral nuclear forces, highlighting their advantages over non-relativistic models, and discusses their current status, features, and potential extensions to antinucleon interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a relativistic chiral nuclear force framework, compares it with traditional models, and discusses its application to scattering data and future prospects.

Findings

Relativistic chiral nuclear force describes scattering phase shifts effectively.

The framework offers unique features compared to non-relativistic models.

Potential extension to antinucleon-nucleon interactions is demonstrated.

Abstract

Understanding nuclear structure, reactions, and the properties of neutron stars from \textit{ab initio} calculations from the nucleon degrees of freedom has always been a primary goal of nuclear physics, in which the microscopic nuclear force serves as the fundamental input. So far, the Weinberg chiral nuclear force, first proposed by the Nobel laureate Weinberg, has become the \textit{de facto} standard input for nuclear \textit{ab initio} studies. However, compared to their non-relativistic counterparts, relativistic \textit{ab initio} calculations, which describe better nuclear observables, have only begun. The lack of modern relativistic nucleon-nucleon interactions is an important issue restricting their development. In this work, we briefly review the development and status of the Weinberg chiral nuclear force, as well as its limitations. We further present a concise introduction to the relativistic chiral nuclear force, show its description of the scattering phase shifts and observables such as differential cross sections, and demonstrate its unique features. Additionally, we show that the relativistic framework could be naturally extended to the antinucleon-nucleon interaction.