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Antinucleon-nucleon interaction in chiral effective field theory

Results of an exploratory study of the antinucleon-nucleon interaction within chiral effective field theory are reported. The antinucleon-nucleon potential is derived up to next-to-next-to-leading order, based on a modified Weinberg power counting, in close analogy to pertinent studies of the nucleon-nucleon interaction. The low-energy constants associated with the arising contact interactions are fixed by a fit to phase shifts and inelasticities provided by a recently published phase-shift analysis of antiproton-proton scattering data. The overall quality of the achieved description of the antinucleon-nucleon amplitudes is comparable to the one found in case of the nucleon-nucleon interaction at the same order. For most S-waves and several P-waves good agreement with the antinucleon-nucleon phase shifts and inelasticities is obtained up to laboratory energies of around 200 MeV.