New Class of Three-Nucleon Forces and Their Implications with Maria Dawid

Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) is an effective field theory that systematically describes the interactions of pions and nucleons, allowing the construction of nuclear forces. While two-body potentials provide the largest contributions to these interactions, three-nucleon (3N) forces can play an important role in systems like nuclei or neutron stars.
The current derivation of the 3N force does not take into account the effects of the so-called d2 operator. 
Although this interaction is suppressed in conventional power-counting estimates, Kaplan, Savage, and Wise showed that renormalization requires this quark mass-dependent term already at the leading order.
In our work, we investigate the consequences of the d2 operator for the 3N force, finding that it leads to a significant contribution that has not been accounted for so far.
This lecture was made possible by the William C. Ferguson Fund.