Three-nucleon force at large distances: Insights from chiral effective field theory and the large-Nc expansion

We confirm the claim of Phillips and Schat (Phys. Rev. C 88, 034002 (2013)) that 20 operators are sufficient to represent the most general local isospin-invariant three-nucleon force and derive explicit relations between the two sets of operators suggested in the above-mentioned work and that by Krebs et al. (Phys. Rev. C 87, 054007 (2013)). We use the set of 20 operators to discuss the chiral expansion of the long- and intermediate-range parts of the three-nucleon force up to next-to-next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order in the standard formulation without explicit Δ(1232) degrees of freedom. We also address implications of the large-N c expansion in QCD for the size of the various three-nucleon force contributions.