Charged Pion-Pair Production and Pion Polarizabilities to two Loops

Abstract

We evaluate the amplitude for gamma gamma --> pi^+ pi^- to two loops in the framework of chiral perturbation theory.The three new coupling constants that enter the result at this order in the low-energy expansion are estimated via resonance saturation. We discuss in addition the crossed channel processes gamma pi^+ --> gamma pi^+ - in particular the charged pion polarizabilities - to the same accuracy. The predictions are compared with available experimental information.