Aharonov-Bohm effect and nucleon-nucleon phase shifts on the lattice

We propose a method for the lattice QCD computation of nucleon-nucleon low-energy interactions. It consists in simulating QCD in the background of a electromagnetic field whose potential is non-vanishing, but whose field strength is zero. By tuning the background field, phase-shifts at any (but small) momenta can be determined by measuring the shift of the ground state energy. Lattice sizes as small as 5 Fermi can be sufficient for the calculation of phase shifts up to momenta of order of m(pi)/2. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.