Relativistic Effects and Three-Nucleon Forces in Nuclear Matter and Nuclei

TL;DR

This paper reviews relativistic meson theory and Dirac-Brueckner-Hartree-Fock methods in nuclear physics, emphasizing three-nucleon forces, and compares these with chiral effective field theory predictions.

Contribution

It interprets Dirac effects as effective three-nucleon forces and discusses their impact on nuclear matter properties and nucleon-nucleus scattering models.

Findings

Dirac effects can be viewed as effective three-nucleon forces.

Relativistic approaches successfully describe nuclear matter and finite nuclei.

Comparisons highlight similarities and differences with chiral effective field theory.

Abstract

We review a large body of predictions obtained within the framework of relativistic meson theory together with the Dirac-Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approach to nuclear matter and finite nuclei. The success of this method has been largely related to its ability to take into account important three-body effects. Therefore, the overarching theme of this article is the interpretation of the so-called "Dirac effects" as an effective three-nucleon force. We address the equation of state of isospin symmetric and asymmetric nucleonic matter and related issues, ranging from proton and neutron density distributions to momentum distributions and short-range correlations. A central part of the discussion is devoted to the optical model potential for nucleon-nucleus scattering. We also take the opportunity to explore similarities and differences with predictions based on the increasingly popular chiral effective field theory.