Nucleon-Nucleon Interactions from Effective Field Theory

Abstract

We have established a new convergent scheme to treat analytically nucleon-nucleon interactions from a chiral effective field theory. The Kaplan-Savage-Wise (KSW) amplitudes are resummed to fulfill the unitarity or right hand cut to all orders below pion production threshold. This is achieved by matching order by order in the KSW power counting the general expression of a partial wave with resummed unitarity cut, with the inverses of the KSW amplitudes. As a result, a new convergent and systematic KSW expansion is derived for an on-shell interacting kernel \cR in terms of which the partial waves are computed. The agreement with data for the S-waves is fairly good up to laboratory energies around 350 MeV and clearly improves and reestablishes the phenomenological success of the KSW amplitudes when treated within this scheme.