During the workshop Compton Scattering off Protons and Light Nuclei: pinning down the nucleon polarisabilities (ECT*, Trento, Italy, 29 July -- 2 August 2013, http://www.ectstar.eu/node/98), recent developments had been reviewed in experimental and t
heoretical studies of real and virtual Compton scattering, static and generalized dipole scalar and spin polarisabilities of nucleons, as well as related phenomena in physics of muonic atoms. A vivid topic at the workshop was pathways towards the most precise extraction of the static polarisabilities from low-energy Compton cattering---including pertinent theoretical uncertainties. Being asked by our experimental colleagues, we prepared during the workshop a short letter with conclusions of the discussion, emphasising future prospects.
We report on a chiral effective field theory calculation of Compton scattering from the proton. Our calculation includes pions, nucleons, and the Delta(1232) as explicit degrees of freedom. It uses the delta expansion, and so implements the hierarchy
of scales m_pi < M_Delta-M_N < Lambda_chi. In this expansion the power counting in the vicinity of the Delta peak changes, and resummation of the loop graphs associated with the Delta width is indicated. We have computed the nucleon Compton amplitude in the delta expansion up to N3LO for photon energies of the order of m_pi. This is the first order at which the proton Compton scattering amplitudes receive contributions from contact operators which encode contributions to the spin-independent polarisabilities from states with energies of the order of Lambda_chi. We fit the coefficients of these two operators to the experimental proton Compton data that has been taken in the relevant photon-energy domain, and are in a position to extract new results for the proton polarisabilities alpha and beta.
