Perturbation Theory Applied to the Nuclear Many-Body Problem

Abstract

Perturbation theory is applied to infinite nuclear matter at the observed density for a well-behaved two-body potential, containing a tensor force. We find that a tensor force can contribute as much as 10 Mev/particle to the binding energy in second order. Perturbation theory is then modified to include the pseudo-potential treatment of an infinite repulsive core. We give a detailed derivation of the DeDominicis-Martin and Huang-Yang result for a pure repulsive core. We obtain an expansion jointly in powers of the strength of the attractive potential, and in the range of the core. We find the second-order contributions to the binding energy for several potentials combining an infinite repulsive core with an attractive potential. For each case considered, the second-order terms are large (absolute value about 20 Mev/particle).