Correlated RPA Calculations for Model Nuclear Matter

Abstract

One of the most exciting prospects on the current nuclear scene is the promise that precision high-energy electron scattering experiments will reveal new (and perhaps unforetold) aspects of nuclear structure and dynamics. The search is on for distinctive signatures of subnucleonic degrees of freedom, and especially for manifestations of the underlying quarkic substructure of nuclei. However, to reach any definite conclusions regarding such effects, it is necessary that we know, with precision, the values which are predicted for the measured quantities by the conventional picture of nuclei. In the conventional picture, a nucleus is composed of nucleus alone, moving nonrelativistically. The nucleonic constituents are considered to interact via bare potentials which reproduce the few-nucleon data while obeying certain constraints imposed by fundamental symmetries and by meson-exchange theory. Even at this rather superficial level, one is confronted with a very difficult many-body problem, essentially nonpertubative because of the strong short-range interactions among the nucleons. It should therefore be no surprise that mean-field theory (in old language, the shell model) fails in experimental settings where large momentum transfers take place and the high-momentum components of the nuclear wave function are being probed.