Relativistic calculation of the pion loop correlation energy in nuclear matter in a theory including confinement

TL;DR

This paper develops a relativistic model incorporating pion loop correlation energy into nuclear matter calculations, improving the understanding of saturation properties by including nucleon structure effects and constrained parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a novel relativistic approach that combines pion loop correlations with a chiral theory-based Hartree-Fock model, constrained by phenomenology and lattice data.

Findings

Correlation energy improves saturation property predictions

Inclusion of nucleon structure effects enhances model accuracy

Parameter g? effectively captures short-range spin-isospin interactions

Abstract

We present a relativistic calculation of the saturation properties of nuclear matter which contains the correlation energy. Pion loops are incorporated on top of a relativistic Hartree-Fock (RHF) approach based on a chiral theory. It includes the effect of nucleon structure through its response to the background chiral invariant scalar field. All the parameters which enter the RHF calculation are fixed or strongly constrained by hadron phenomenology or lattice data. The new input for the correlation energy is the Landau-Migdal parameter g? governing the short-range part of the spin-isospin interaction. We find that the inclusion of the correlation energy improves the description of the saturation properties of nuclear matter.