Conference Discussion of the Nuclear Force

Discussion of the nuclear force, lead by a round table consisting of T. Cohen, E. Epelbaum, R. Machleidt, and F. Gross (chair). After an invited talk by Machleidt, published elsewhere in these proceedings, brief remarks are made by Epelbaum, Cohen, and Gross, followed by discussion from the floor moderated by the chair. The chair asked the round table and the participants to focus on the following issues: (1) What does each approach (chiral effective field theory, large Nc, and relativistic phenomenology) contribute to our knowledge of the nuclear force? Do we need them all? Is any one transcendent? (2) How important for applications (few body, nuclear structure, EMC effect, for example) are precise fits to the N N data below 350 MeV? How precise do these fits have to be? (3) Can we learn anything about nonperturbative QCD from these studies of the nuclear force? The discussion presented here is based on a video recording made at the conference and transcribed afterward. (author)