In-medium ηN interactions and η nuclear bound states

The in-medium ηN interaction near and below threshold is constructed from a free-space chirally-inspired meson–baryon coupled-channel model that captures the physics of the N^⁎(1535) baryon resonance. Nucleon Pauli blocking and hadron self-energies are accounted for. The resulting energy-dependent in-medium interaction is used in self-consistent dynamical calculations of η nuclear bound states. Narrow states of width Γ_η≲2MeV are found across the periodic table, beginning with A⩾10, for this in-medium coupled-channel interaction model. The binding energy of the 1s_η state increases with A, reaching a value of B_1s(η)≈15MeV. The implications of our self-consistency procedure are discussed with respect to procedures used in other works