English

The breakdown scale of pionless effective field theory in the three-nucleon sector

Nuclear Theory 2025-07-14 v1

Abstract

We make order-by-order predictions of neutron-deuteron total cross sections up to next-to-next-to-leading order in pionless effective field theory. Using Bayesian methods, we infer a posterior distribution for the breakdown scale. The result shows a mode near 100 MeV, and a combined analysis with neutron-proton scattering further sharpens the inference, placing the mode close to the pion mass scale, consistent with the expected range of pionless effective field theory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.08700,
  title  = {The breakdown scale of pionless effective field theory in the three-nucleon sector},
  author = {Andreas Ekström and Lucas Platter},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.08700},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

6 pages, 5 figured