Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of electromagnetic moments and transitions in A 9 nuclei with meson-exchange currents derived from chiral effective field theory

Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of electromagnetic moments and transitions are reported for A{<=}9 nuclei. The realistic Argonne v{sub 18} two-nucleon and Illinois-7 three-nucleon potentials are used to generate the nuclear wave functions. Contributions of two-body meson-exchange current (MEC) operators are included for magnetic moments and M1 transitions. The MEC operators have been derived in both a standard nuclear physics approach and a chiral effective field theory formulation with pions and nucleons including up to one-loop corrections. The two-body MEC contributions provide significant corrections and lead to very good agreement with experiment. Their effect is particularly pronounced in the A=9, T=3/2 systems, in which they provide up to ~20% (~40%) of the total predicted value for the {sup 9}Li ({sup 9}C) magnetic moment.