Delta-excitations and the three-nucleon force

E. Epelbaum, H. Krebs, Ulf-G. Meißner

Published 2007-12-12, updated 2007-12-13Version 2

We study the three-nucleon force in chiral effective field theory with explicit Delta-resonance degrees of freedom. We show that up to next-to-next-to-leading order, the only contribution to the isospin symmetric three-nucleon force involving the spin-3/2 degrees of freedom is given by the two-pion-exchange diagram with an intermediate delta, frequently called the Fujita-Miyazawa force. We also analyze the leading isospin-breaking corrections due to the delta. For that, we give the first analysis of the delta quartet mass splittings in chiral effective field theory. The charge-symmetry breaking three-nucleon force due to an intermediate delta excitation is small, of the order of a few keV.