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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yang, Yilong, Epelbaum, Evgeny, Meng, Jie, Meng, Lu, Zhao, Pengwei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.09961
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Table of Contents:
  • We propose and demonstrate that peripheral neutron-$α$ scattering at low energies can serve as a sensitive and clean probe of the long-range three-nucleon forces. To this aim, we perform {\it ab initio} quantum Monte Carlo calculations using two- and three-nucleon interactions derived in chiral effective field theory up to third expansion order. We show that the longest-range three-nucleon force stemming from the two-pion exchange plays a crucial role in the proper description of the neutron-$α$ $D$-wave phase shifts. Our Letter reveals the predictive power of chiral symmetry in the few-body sector and opens a new direction for probing and constraining three-nucleon forces.