Exotic Nuclei and Matter in a Chirally Effective Approach

Abstract

A relativistic approach to describe nuclear and in general strongly interacting matter is introduced and discussed. Here, not only the nuclear forces but also the masses of the nucleons are generated through meson fields. Within this framework it is possible to calculate properties of finite nuclei at a level of accuracy similar to dedicated relativistic nuclear structure models. Due to the more general approach, a wider range of properties of hadronic states can be investigated. A number of results for heavy and neutron-rich nuclei toward the drip line are presented.