Three-body forces, relativistic effects, isobars, and pions in nuclear systems

Conventional microscopic calculations in nuclear physics start from a nonrelativistic Hamiltonian. The many-body Schroedinger equation is then solved to obtain the ground state energy, wave function, and expectation values of other quantities of interest. Such a procedure gives a qualitative description of nuclear saturation properties, but it is now well established that the simple H is quantitatively inadequate. For example, the light nuclei are underbound with too large a charge radius, while nuclear matter is overbound at far too high a density. This note reviews recent studies that go beyond the simple H. These include 1) the introduction of three-nucleon potentials, 2) estimates of relativistic effects, 3) the introduction of isobar degrees of freedom in the two-body potential, and 4) probing the influence of pion degrees of freedom on nuclear systems