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

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.