Constructing chiral effective field theory around unnatural leading-order interactions

Abstract: A momentum-dependent formulation based on a stationary spin-0 and isospin-1 dibaryon field is proposed to improve convergence of chiral effective field theory in the $\cs{1}{0}$ channel of $NN$ scattering. Although the two-parameter leading-order interaction appears to be unnatural, it nevertheless has the necessary features of an effective field theory. A rapid order-by-order convergence is found in $\cs{1}{0}$. As an application beyond the two-body level, the triton binding energy is studied and compared to standard chiral effective field theory with partly perturbative pions. The consistency of the chiral Lagrangian for the new formulation is examined by working out the pionic radiative corrections, and consequences of nontrivial chiral-connection terms are discussed.