Causality constraints for charged particles

In quantum systems with short-range interactions, causality imposes nontrivial constraints on low-energy scattering parameters. We investigate these causality constraints for systems where a long-range Coulomb potential is present in addition to a short-range interaction. The main result is an upper bound for the Coulomb-modified effective range parameter. We discuss the implications of this bound to the effective field theory for nuclear halo systems. In particular, we consider several examples of proton–nucleus and nucleus–nucleus scattering. For the bound-state regime, we find relations for the asymptotic normalization coefficients (ANCs) of nuclear halo states. As an application of these relations, we extract the ANCs of the excited 2 + and 1 − states in 16 O from α − 12 C scattering data.