Information on three-body interactions from inversion of the energy equations

The inversion of the three energy equations, i.e. for the nuclear total energy, the sum of occupied single-particle state energies and the saturation condition, using the experimental data in 16O and 40Ca, is carried out to determine whether three-body effective interactions are necessary in addition to density independent and dependent two-body interactions. In order to fit the data both in a non-relativistic and a relativistic framework, the three-body interaction energy is found to be large and repulsive. We also show that density-dependent two-body effective interactions, which are another requisite in the non-relativistic potential theory, are not necessarily needed in the relativistic mean field framework but allow to increase the effective nucleon mass. (orig.)