  We optimize the nucleon-nucleon interaction from chiral effective field
theory at next-to-next- to-leading order. The resulting new chiral force
NNLOopt yields \chi^2 \approx 1 per degree of freedom for laboratory energies
below approximately 125 MeV. In the A = 3, 4 nucleon systems, the contributions
of three-nucleon forces are smaller than for previous parametrizations of
chiral interactions. We use NNLOopt to study properties of key nuclei and
neutron matter, and demonstrate that many aspects of nuclear structure can be
understood in terms of this nucleon-nucleon interaction, without explicitly
invoking three-nucleon forces.
