Three nucleons at very low energies

P. F. Bedaque

Published 1998-06-13, updated 1998-06-16Version 2

We discuss the effective field theory approach to nuclear phenomena with typical momentum below the pion mass. We particularly focus on the three body problem. In the $J=3/2$ channel,effective field theory is extremelly predictive and we are able to describe the nucleon-deuteron scattering amplitude at the percent level using only two parameters obtained from nucleon-nucleon scattering. We briefly comment onthe $J=1/2$ channel and the issues related to the non-perturbative renormalization of the three body force.