Abstract
published: Phys Rev. C 104, 054001 (2021) We closely investigate NN potentials based upon the Delta-full version of
chiral effective field theory. We find that recently constructed NN potentials
of this kind, which (when applied together with three-nucleon forces) were
presented as predicting accurate binding energies and radii for a range of
nuclei from A=16 to A=132 and providing accurate equations of state for nuclear
matter, yield a chi^2/datum of 60 for the reproduction of the pp data below 100
MeV laboratory energy. This chi^2 is more than three times what the
Hamada-Johnston potential of the year of 1962 achieved already some 60 years
ago. We perceive this historical fact as concerning in view of the current
emphasis on precision. We are able to trace the very large chi^2 as well as the
apparent success of the potentials in nuclear structure to unrealistic
predictions for P-wave states, in which the Delta-full NNLO potentials are off
by up to 40 times the NNLO truncation errors. In fact, we show that, the worse
the description of the P-wave states, the better the predictions in nuclear
structure. Thus, these potentials cannot be seen as the solution to the
outstanding problems in current miscroscopic nuclear structure physics.