Quarks and the saturation properties of nuclear matter.

Abstract

A two-region model of the nuclear force is developed by using quark degrees of freedom at short ranges and nucleons elsewhere. In the quark sector, the soliton bag model and generator coordinates are used so that the quark fields undergo a continuous deformation as the two nucleons overlap. This model describes the spin singlet nucleon-nucleon scattering data very well. The density and binding energy of nuclear matter are also computed in lowest-order Brueckner theory. Quark effects are found to decrease both the saturation density and binding energy.