Comparative study of three-nucleon force models in nuclear matter

TL;DR

This study compares three-nucleon force models in nuclear matter using the Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approach, revealing limitations in reproducing empirical saturation and few-nucleon properties.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of two recent three-nucleon force models within a microscopic many-body framework.

Findings

Neither model reproduces the empirical saturation point.

Models fail to simultaneously match properties of few-nucleon systems.

Highlights need for improved three-nucleon force models.

Abstract

We calculate the energy per particle of symmetric nuclear matter and pure neutron matter using the microscopic many-body Brueckner-Hartree-Fock (BHF) approach and employing the Argonne V18 (AV18) nucleon-nucleon (NN) potential supplemented with two different three-nucleon force models recently constructed to reproduce the binding energy of $^3$H, $^3$He and $^4$He nuclei as well as the neutron-deuteron doublet scattering length. We find that none of these new three-nucleon force models is able to reproduce simultaneously the empirical saturation point of symmetric nuclear matter and the properties of three- and four-nucleon systems.