Renormalization versus strong form factors for one-boson-exchange potentials

Abstract

We analyze the One Boson Exchange Potential from the point of view of Renormalization theory. We show that the nucleon-meson Lagrangean while predicting the NN force does not predict the NN scattering matrix nor the deuteron properties unambiguously due to the appearance of short distance singularities. While the problem has traditionally been circumvented by introducing vertex functions via phenomenological strong form factors, we propose to impose physical renormalization conditions on the scattering amplitude at low energies. Working in the large Nc approximation with pi,sigma,rho and omega mesons, we show that, once these conditions are applied, results for low energy phases of proton-neutron scattering as well as deuteron properties become largely insensitive to the form factors and to the vector mesons and yield a reasonable agreement with the data, for realistic values of the coupling constants.