Relativistic transport theory for hadronic matter

We derive coupled equations of motion for the density matrices for nucleons, Δ resonances, and π mesons, as well as for the pion--baryon interaction vertex function for the description of nuclear reactions at intermediate energies. We start from an effective hadronic Lagrangian density with minimal coupling between baryons and mesons. By truncating at the level of three-body correlations and using the G-matrix method to solve the equations of motion for the two-body correlation functions, a closed equation of motion for the one-body density matrices is obtained. A subsequent Wigner transformation then leads to a tractable set of relativistic transport equations for interacting nucleons, deltas, and pions. copyright 1991 Academic Press, Inc