Entanglement minimization in hadronic scattering with pions

Recent work arXiv:1812.03138 [nucl-th] conjectured that entanglement is minimized in low-energy hadronic scattering processes. It was shown that the minimization of the entanglement power (EP) of the low-energy baryon-baryon $S$-matrix implies novel spin-flavor symmetries that are distinct from large-$N_c$ QCD predictions and are confirmed by high-precision lattice QCD simulations. Here the conjecture of minimal entanglement is investigated for scattering processes involving pions and nucleons. The EP of the $S$-matrix is constructed for the $\pi\pi$ and $\pi N$ systems, and the consequences of minimization of entanglement are discussed and compared with large-$N_c$ QCD expectations.