Nucleon-nucleon interaction in chiral effective field theory with a finite cutoff: Explicit perturbative renormalization at next-to-leading order

We present a study of two-nucleon scattering in chiral effective field theory with a finite cutoff to next-toleading order in the chiral expansion. In the proposed scheme, the contributions of the lowest-order interaction to the scattering amplitude are summed up to an arbitrary order, while the corrections beyond leading order are iterated only once. We consider a general form of the regulator for the leading-order potential including local and nonlocal structures. The main objective of the paper is to address formal aspects of renormalizability within the considered scheme. In particular, we provide a rigorous proof, valid to all orders in the iterations of the leading-order potential, that power-counting breaking terms originating from the integration regions with momenta of the order of the cutoff can be absorbed into the renormalization of the low energy constants of the leading contact interactions. We also demonstrate that the cutoff dependence of the scattering amplitude can be reduced by perturbatively subtracting the regulator artifacts at next-to-leading order. The obtained numerical results for phase shifts in P and higher partial waves confirm the applicability of our scheme for nucleon-nucleon scattering.