Variation of fundamental couplings and nuclear forces

The dependence of the nuclear force on standard model parameters plays an important role in bounding time and space variations of fundamental couplings over cosmological time scales. We discuss the quark-mass dependence of deuteron and di-neutron binding in a systematic chiral expansion. The leading quark-mass dependence of the nuclear force arises from one-pion exchange and from local quark-mass dependent four-nucleon operators with coefficients that are presently unknown. By varying these coefficients while leaving nuclear observables at the physical values of the quark masses invariant, we find scenarios where two-nucleon physics depends both weakly and strongly on the quark masses. While the determination of these coefficients is an exciting future opportunity for lattice QCD, we conclude that, at present, bounds on time and space variations of fundamental parameters from the two-nucleon sector are much weaker than previously claimed. This brings into question the reliability of coupling-constant bounds derived from more complex nuclei and nuclear processes. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.