Relativistic effects in nuclear physics

Relativistic effects in nuclear physics, especially those in nuclear structure, are discussed. While general arguments are given which exclude several recently proposed effects, two important relativistic effects remain: (1) A strongly density-dependent repulsive term in the energy per particle (deltaepsilon)sub(rel) approx.2(p/psub(o)sup(8/3)Mev), where psub(o) is nuclear matter density, arises from virtual pair terms; this term is very important in saturating nuclear matter. (2) The nucleon-nucleon spin-orbit interaction is enhanced, since the nucleon mass which enters into this interaction is effectively changed locally by scalar fields which connect to negative energy states. (author)