Effective field theory for nucleons and light nuclei

我们计划用核子、介子和光子的场论来研究单核子和轻核子的性质。“有效”理论尊重强相互作用基础理论的对称性：量子色动力学（QCD）。我们计划在这些理论中改进对核子性质的描述，并利用它们以一种与模型无关的方式确定核子之间的力。研究结果将应用于光子与少核子系统相互作用的计算。特别有趣的是康普顿散射，它提供了核子内部结构的一个非常敏感的探针，因为它可以用来确定描述核子对电磁场响应的完整的极化集。以中子为例，我们的工作将有助于从轻核实验中提取这些极化率。这些理论允许我们将核子性质写成介子质量的幂级数，这是对QCD的手性对称性被夸克质量破坏程度的一种度量。目前在大时空晶格上对QCD的模拟使用的夸克质量比现实世界中的夸克质量大得多。我们对核子性质的扩展将需要将这些计算的结果外推到实际的夸克质量。

We plan to study the properties of single nucleons and light nuclei using field theories of nucleons, pions and photons. The 'effective' theories respect the symmetries of the underlying theory of the strong interaction: quantum chromodynamics (QCD). We plan to improve the description of nucleon properties in these theories, and to use them to determine the forces between nucleons in a model-independent way. The results will be applied to the calculations of the interactions of photons with few-nucleon systems. Of particular interest is Compton scattering which provides a very sensitive probe of the internal structure of the nucleon since it can be used to determine the complete set of polarisabilities which describe the repsonse fo a nucleon to an electromagnetic field. In the case of the neutron, our work will help with extracting these polarisabilities from experiments on light nuclei. These theories allow us to write nucleon properties as power series in the mass of the pion, which is a measure of how strongly the chiral symmetry of QCD is broken by the quark masses. Current simulations of QCD on large space-time lattices are carried out using quark masses that are much larger than those in the real world. Our expansions of nucleon properties will be needed to extrapolate the results of these calculations to realistic quark masses.