Meson Theory Of Nuclear Forces

The concept of fundamental nuclear forces emerged gradually during the start of the 1930s and reached our present level of description some time before the 1950s. The Origin of the Concept of Nuclear Forces presents a unified, comprehensive account of the history of this important part of the modern scientific worldview. In addition, the authors, foremost experts in the field, examine the sociological and philosophical aspects of the story in light of the various theories of scientific development. The book contains analyses of published work, archival materials, and original interviews. It will be appealing primarily to historians of science and physicists interested in the roots of their field.

The simplest model of nuclear matter is a collection of point nucleons interacting through a two-body potential that accounts for scattering data and the properties of the deuteron. In order to use and to test this model we must be able, for a given two-body potential, to 'calculate the l 9 corresponding saturation curve of nucle~r matter. The Brueckner-Bethe metho- is one method of making this calculation. The available evidence suggests that, at present, the Brueckner-Bethe method can be used to locate the saturation point with an uncertainty of -1 2-3 MeV in energy and about 0.1 fm in~. This is not very high accuracy, but it is good enough to make a start on physically interesting calculations. In this paper I describe the Brueckner-Bethe method and illustrate it with numerical results. Some of the results are designed to test the accuracy of the method, some are comparisons with variational calculations, and a saturation curve for the full Reid potential is given.

The simplest model of nuclear matter is a collection of point nucleons interacting through a two-body potential that accounts for scattering data and the properties of the deuteron. In order to use and to test this model we must be able, for a given two-body potential, to 'calculate the l 9 corresponding saturation curve of nucle~r matter. The Brueckner-Bethe metho- is one method of making this calculation. The available evidence suggests that, at present, the Brueckner-Bethe method can be used to locate the saturation point with an uncertainty of -1 2-3 MeV in energy and about 0.1 fm in~. This is not very high accuracy, but it is good enough to make a start on physically interesting calculations. In this paper I describe the Brueckner-Bethe method and illustrate it with numerical results. Some of the results are designed to test the accuracy of the method, some are comparisons with variational calculations, and a saturation curve for the full Reid potential is given.