Equation of state; symmetric nuclear matter two and three body forces

Equation of state (EOS) of nuclear matter is of great importance in nuclear physics for theoretical understanding of heavy ion collisions, supernova explosions and structure of neutron stars. One of the long standing problems in nuclear many-body theory is to obtain the nuclear matter binding energy and saturation properties in conformity with empirical estimates, starting from a realistic nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction. Microscopic nucleon optical potential is directly related through folding model to the mean field in nuclear matter and hence the EOS