Nuclear structure in the light of modern particle physics

Abstract

Within the framework of the conventional boson theory of nuclear matter, internal excitation of the nucleons plays a decisive rôle in the determination of nuclear binding. On the other hand, the existence of these excited states is due to the internal quark-gluon structure of the nucleons. It is pointed out that the bag models which describe this structure in a simplified way are in contradiction with the conventional nuclear theory. In order to find a way out of this discrepancy it is suggested that it might be worthwhile to investigate an “overall” bag structure of the nucleus in which the individual nucleon bags are to some extent dissolved into quark matter. The relatively strong internal excitation of the nucleons in conventional theory already points in this direction.