We discuss two topics concerning the application of chiral perturbation theory to nuclear physics: (1) the latest developments in the study of possible kaon condensation in dense baryonic systems; (2) nuclear responses to electro-weak probes.
A unified treatment of both chiral and radiative corrections to the low-energy elastic lepton-proton scattering processes is presented in Heavy Baryon Chiral Perturbations Theory. The proton hadronic chiral corrections include the next-to-next-to leading order corrections whereas the radiative corrections include the next-to-leading order terms in our novel power counting scheme. We find that the net fractional well-defined chiral corrections with respect to the leading order Born cross section can be as large as $10%$ ($20%$) for electron (muon) scattering process for MUon proton Scattering Experiment (MUSE) kinematics. We show {it via} our model-independent treatment of the low-energy lepton-proton kinematics, that the largest theoretical uncertainty is due to the recent different published values of the protons rms radius while, e.g., the next higher order hadronic chiral terms are expected to give rather nominal errors. For the radiative corrections we demonstrate a systematic order by order cancellation of all infrared singularities and present our finite ultraviolet regularization results. We find that the radiative corrections for muon-proton scattering is of the order of $2%$, whereas for electron scattering the radiative corrections could be as large as $25%$. We attribute such a contrasting result partially to the fact that in muon scattering the leading radiative order correction goes through zero in some intermediate low-momentum transfer region, leaving the sub-leading radiative chiral order effects to play a dominant role in this particular kinematic region. For the low-energy MUSE experiment, the often neglected lepton mass as well as the Pauli form factor contributions of the relativistic leptons are incorporated in all our computations.
We use heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory to evaluate the two-photon exchange corrections to the low-energy elastic lepton-proton scattering at next-to-leading order accuracy, i.e., ${mathcal O}(alpha, M^{-1})$, including a non-zero lepton mass. We consider the elastic proton intermediate state in the two-photon exchange together in the soft photon approximation. The infrared singular contributions are projected out using dimensional regularization. The resulting infrared singularity-free two-photon exchange contribution is in good numerical agreement with existing predictions based on standard diagrammatic soft photon approximation evaluations.
We study finite isospin chiral perturbation theory ($chi$PT) in a uniform external magnetic field and find the condensation energy of magnetic vortex lattices using the method of successive approximations (originally used by Abrikosov) near the upper critical point beyond which the system is in the normal vacuum phase. The difference between standard Ginzburg-Landau (GL) theory (or equivalently the Abelian Higgs model) and $chi$PT arises due to the presence of additional momentum-dependent (derivative) interactions in $chi$PT and the presence of electromagnetically neutral pions that interact with the charged pions via strong interactions but do not couple directly to the external magnetic field. We find that while the vortex lattice structure is hexagonal similar to vortices in GL theory, the condensation energy (relative to the normal vacuum state in a uniform, external magnetic field) is smaller (larger in magnitude) due to the presence of derivative interactions. Furthermore, we establish that neutral pions do not condense in the vortex lattice near the upper critical field.
We investigate the spin-independent part of the virtual Compton scattering (VCS) amplitude off the nucleon within the framework of chiral perturbation theory. We perform a consistent calculation to third order in external momenta according to Weinbergs power counting. With this calculation we can determine the second- and fourth-order structure-dependent coefficients of the general low-energy expansion of the spin-averaged VCS amplitude based on gauge invariance, crossing symmetry and the discrete symmetries. We discuss the kinematical regime to which our calculation can be applied and compare our expansion with the multipole expansion by Guichon, Liu and Thomas. We establish the connection of our calculation with the generalized polarizabilities of the nucleon where it is possible.
Employing the covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory, we calculate the leading and next-to-leading order two-pion exchange (TPE) contributions to $NN$ interaction up to order $O(p^3)$. We compare the so-obtained $NN$ phase shifts with $2leq Lleq 6$ and mixing angles with $2leq Jleq6$ with those obtained in the nonrelativistic baryon chiral perturbation theory, which allows us to check the relativistic corrections to the medium-range part of $NN$ interactions. We show that the contributions of relativistic TPE are more moderate than those of the nonrelativistic TPE. The relativistic corrections play an important role in F-waves especially the $^3text{F}_2$ partial wave. Moreover, the relativistic results seem to converge faster than the nonrelativistic results in almost all the partial waves studied in the present work, consistent with the studies performed in the one-baryon sector.