Few-nucleon scattering in pionless effective field theory

• DOI: 10.1103/physrevc.107.064001
• Publication Date: 2023-06-06T20:20:02Z
• Authors: Martin Schäfer; Betzalel Bazak
• Keywords: Nuclear Theory (nucl-th); Nuclear Theory; 0103 physical sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; 01 natural sciences

We present a comprehensive theoretical study of low-energy few nucleon scattering for systems with $A\leq 4$. To this end, we utilize pionless effective field theory, which we employ at next-to-leading order. We show that at this level the theory yields accurate predictions for the low-energy scattering parameters in all studied channels. These predictions are on par with the best experimental evaluations and the available theoretical calculations. We confirm the recent observation that a four-body force is needed at next-to-leading-order and find that for nuclear systems it only appears in a single spin-isospin channel.