An approach to the nuclear many-body problem including virtual mesons. I

A method is presented allowing a self-consistent treatment of meson dynamics in finite nuclei. The single-nucleon self-energy is derived in the framework of the HF approximation. The differences with respect to the usual (static) HF approach are the energy dependence of the self-energy and the appearance of a new term, and both are due to the time delay in meson propagation. The first effect introduces a double self-consistency condition on both the single-particle energies and wave functions. The reported results on the 12C and 16O nuclei show the importance of the correct treatment of meson degrees of freedom. (Auth.)