Making predictions using χEFT

Licentiate thesis, 2015

In this thesis we explore the merits of chiral effective field theory (χEFT) as a model for low-energy nuclear physics. χEFT is an effective field theory based on quantum chromo dynamics (QCD) describing low-energy interactions of nucleons and pions. We estimate the inherent uncertainties of χEFT and the accompanying methods used to compute observables in order to test the predictive power of the model. We use experimental pion-nucleon, nucleon- nucleon and few-nucleon data to perform a simultaneous fit of the low-energy constants in χEFT. This results in small statistical uncertainties in the model. The results show a clear order-by-order improvement of χEFT with the systematical model error dominating the total error budget.