Nucleon-nucleon interactions via Lattice QCD: Methodology

We review the potential method in lattice QCD, which has recently been proposed to extract nucleon-nucleon interactions via numerical simulations. We focus on the methodology of this approach by emphasizing the strategy of the potential method, the theoretical foundation behind it, and special numerical techniques. We compare the potential method with the standard finite volume method in lattice QCD, in order to make pros and cons of the approach clear. We also present several numerical results for nucleon-nucleon potentials.