Chiral Symmetry in Nuclear Physics

E. Epelbaum (RUB) / N. Kaiser (TUM) / J. Meng (PKU)

Summary

Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking plays an important role for low-energy nuclear dynamics.
Its dynamical consequences can be addressed in a model-independent and systematically
improvable way by effective field theory (EFT). Combined with ab-initio few- and many-body
methods, chiral EFT provides an efficient microscopic approach to analyze nuclear structure and
reactions. On the other hand, collective excitation modes of triaxially deformed nuclei, showing the
phenomenon of chiral bands, have stimulated the formulation of an EFT directly in terms of the
collective degrees of freedom. In the second funding period we obtained a number of important
results along both lines of research, including the investigation of nuclear matter with chiral forces,
the role of the ∆-resonance in the long-range three-nucleon force, and the generalization and
application of EFT to triaxially deformed nuclei. In the third funding period we will focus on the
following topics: Nuclear forces with explicit ∆-isobars, density-dependent NN-potential from chiral
four-nucleon forces, and the EFT-description of chiral doublet bands in deformed nuclei.