Nuclear Force from Lattice QCD

Abstract

The first lattice QCD result on the nuclear force (the NN potential) is presented in the quenched level. The standard Wilson gauge action and the standard Wilson quark action are employed on the lattice of the size 16^3\times 24 with the gauge coupling beta=5.7 and the hopping parameter kappa=0.1665. To obtain the NN potential, we adopt a method recently proposed by CP-PACS collaboration to study the pi pi scattering phase shift. It turns out that this method provides the NN potentials which are faithful to those obtained in the analysis of NN scattering data. By identifying the equal-time Bethe-Salpeter wave function with the Schroedinger wave function for the two nucleon system, the NN potential is reconstructed so that the wave function satisfies the time-independent Schroedinger equation. In this report, we restrict ourselves to the J^P=0^+ and I=1 channel, which enables us to pick up unambiguously the ``central&#39;&#39; NN potential V_{central}(r). The resulting potential is seen to posses a clear repulsive core of about 500 MeV at short distance (r < 0.5 fm). Although the attraction in the intermediate and long distance regions is still missing in the present lattice set-up, our method is appeared to be quite promising in reconstructing the NN potential with lattice QCD.