Origin and properties of strong inter-nucleon interactions

TL;DR

This paper reviews the historical development and current theoretical approaches to understanding nuclear forces, emphasizing the chiral effective field theory and discussing unresolved issues like renormalization and three-nucleon forces.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the origin, properties, and modern theoretical modeling of nuclear forces, highlighting key open problems in the field.

Findings

Chiral effective field theory is a promising framework for nuclear forces.

Current challenges include proper renormalization of two-nucleon potentials.

Understanding sub-leading three-nucleon forces remains an open issue.

Abstract

I start with a historical review of the attempts to construct theories for the origin of nuclear forces, for which I also summaries the most important properties. The review then shifts to its main focus, which is the chiral effective field theory approach to nuclear forces. I summarize the current status of this approach and discuss the most important open issues: the proper renormalization of the chiral two-nucleon potential and sub-leading three-nucleon forces.