Electromagnetic reactions on light nuclei using chiral effective theory

Abstract

I describe the use of chiral effective theory (ChiET) to compute electromagnetic reactions in two- and three-nucleon systems. I first explain how chiral perturbation theory can be extended to the few-nucleon sector. I then explain the predictions of the resulting ChiET for electron-deuteron scattering, and how they will be tested by forthcoming data from BLAST. I conclude by displaying predictions for elastic Compton scattering from deuterium and Helium-3 nuclei. These computations, in concert with future data from MAX-Lab and HIGS, should give significant new information on neutron polarizabilities, and hence yield insight into the structure of the nucleon.