Abstract
During the past two decades, chiral effective field theory (EFT) has evolved into a powerful tool to derive nuclear forces from first principles. This review is started with a pedagogical introduction, and then it is shown in detail how, governed by chiral symmetry, the long- and intermediate-range parts of the NN potential unfold order by order. The expansion proceeds up to sixth order in small momenta, where convergence is achieved. A remarkable point of chiral EFT is that it produces not only two-nucleon forces but also many-body forces on an equal footing with the two-body forces. Therefore, this review finishes with an overview of the systematic development of three- and four-nucleon forces, which play a subtle, but crucial, role in microscopic nuclear structure calculations.