VELOCITY-DEPENDENT NUCLEON–NUCLEON POTENTIALS AND SATURATION IN NUCLEAR MATTER

Abstract

Recently, nonsingular velocity-dependent potentials have been constructed which fit the the two-nucleon data, but do not give saturation in nuclear matter at reasonable densities. In this paper, we have asked what features a potential should have in order to give saturation, and we have found that the short-range wave-function distortion (defined in the text) is important. Reasons are given for the failure of the earlier potentials to saturate, and a new velocity-dependent potential is proposed which gives results similar to the standard hard-core potential model. We speculate on the usefulness of such potentials for future calculations of nuclear properties.