Studies of two-nucleon interactions and few-body electromagnetic structure in chiral effective field theory

A coordinate-space nucleon-nucleon potential is constructed in chiral effective field theory (chiEFT) retaining pions, nucleons and Delta-isobars as explicit degrees of freedom. The calculation of the potential is carried out by including one-and two-pion-exchange contributions up to next-to-next-to-leading order (N2LO) and contact interactions tip to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N3LO). The low-energy constants multiplying these contact interactions are fitted to the 2013 Granada database in the laboratory-energy range 0--300 MeV. Three versions of this chiral potential, corresponding to three different cutoffs, have been developed. The cutoff regularizes the one- and two-pion exchange as well as the contact part of the potential. A study of the electromagnetic structure of A = 2 and 3 nuclei is also presented in this thesis. The calculation of the static properties and elastic form factors of the deuteron and trinucleons (3He and 3H) is implemented in momentum-space, by utilizing nuclear wave functions obtained either from chiral or realistic potentials, in combination with chiral electromagnetic operators derived up to one loop. Predictions for these physical observables are in a satisfactory agreement with the experimental data.