Triangle Nuclear Theory Colloquium - Radiative corrections and the renormalization group in few-nucleon systems

A variety of low-energy, high-precision experiments, such as atomic spectroscopy and lepton scattering, are used to test the electroweak structure of light nuclei. The theory support for these experiments is often rooted in modern effective field theory (EFT) techniques. However, it is necessary to include the effects of radiative corrections at the precision relevant for many experiments, which comes with new challenges that have previously been unaddressed in the nuclear EFT paradigm. In this talk, we outline a consistent treatment of radiative corrections in pionless EFT using the velocity renormalization group originally developed in the context of nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics. We present renormalization group improved calculations of the deuteron charge form factor and radiative capture process, which are relevant for charge radius extractions and Big Bang nucleosynthesis, respectively.