Deuteron Magnetic Quadrupole Moment From Chiral Effective Field Theory

Understand

We calculate the magnetic quadrupole moment (MQM) of the deuteron at leading order in the systematic expansion provided by chiral effective field theory.

• We take into account parity and time-reversal violation which, at the quark-gluon level, results from the QCD vacuum angle and dimension-six operators that originate from physics beyond the Standard Model.
• We show that the deuteron MQM can be expressed in terms of five low-energy constants that appear in the parity- and time-reversal-violating nuclear potential and electromagnetic current, four of which also contribute to the electric dipole moments of light nuclei.
• We conclude that the deuteron MQM has an enhanced sensitivity to the QCD vacuum angle and that its measurement would be complementary to the proposed measurements of light-nuclear EDMs.