Description of intermediate- and short-range NN nuclear force within a covariant effective field theory

Abstract

The present paper is aimed to developing an effective field theory in the GeV region to describe consistently both elastic and inelastic NN-scattering in a fully covariant way. In this development we employ our novel s-channel mechanism of NN-interaction at intermediate and short ranges assuming a formation of the six-quark bag dressed with basic meson fields such as $\pi$, $\sigma$, $\rho$ and $\omega$ in the intermediate state. The peripheral part of the interaction is governed by t-channel one- and two-pion exchanges described fairly well by chiral perturbation theory. The $\sigma$-meson dressing should be especially important for the stabilization of the bag due to a high coupling constant of the $\sigma$-meson with the bag and also a strong interaction between the $\sigma$-field and space symmetric quark core $|s^6[6]>$. This stabilization of the intermediate dressed bag (which shifts the mass of the bag downward to NN threshold) will be crucially important for the description of $\pi$, $2\pi$, $\rho$ and $\omega$-meson production in NN-collisions, and, in particular, for the correct description of $\pi^0$ production near threshold. So that, we expect that the results of the present work will lead to a deeper understanding the short- and intermediate-range nuclear forces and internucleon correlations in nuclei.