We present calculations of nucleon-deuteron scattering as well as ground and low-lying excited states of light nuclei in the mass range $A=3–16$ up through next-to-next-to-leading order in chiral effective field theory using semilocal coordinate-space regularized two- and three-nucleon forces. It is shown that both of the low-energy constants entering the three-nucleon force at this order can be determined from the triton binding energy and the differential cross section minimum in elastic nucleon-deuteron scattering. From all considered nucleon-deuteron scattering observables, the strongest constraint on these low-energy constants emerges from the precisely measured cross section minimum at $E_N=70$ MeV. The inclusion of the three-nucleon force is found to improve the agreement with the data for most of the considered observables.

• Received 26 July 2018
• Revised 5 January 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.99.024313