Saturation of nuclear matter in effective field theory

Abstract

The two- and three-nucleon interaction derived in chiral effective field theory at next-to-next-to-leading order is used to obtain the binding energy of nuclear matter. Saturation is found at a binding energy per particle E/A = -16.2 \pm 0.3 MeV and a Fermi momentum k_F = 1.30 \pm 0.03 fm^{-1}, where the uncertainty is due to the cut-off dependence of the two-nucleon interaction. The sensitivity of these values to the three-nucleon force is also studied.