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Structure of the Vacuum in Nuclear Matter - A Nonperturbative Approach

A. Mishra, P. K. Panda, S. Schramm, J. Reinhardt, W. Greiner

nucl-tharXiv:nucl-th/9702008

Abstract

We compute the vacuum polarisation correction to the binding energy of nuclear matter in the Walecka model using a nonperturbative approach. We first study such a contribution as arising from a ground state structure with baryon-antibaryon condensates. This yields the same results as obtained through the relativistic Hartree approximation of summing tadpole diagrams for the baryon propagator. Such a vacuum is then generalized to include quantum effects from meson fields through scalar-meson condensates. The method is applied to study properties of nuclear matter and leads to a softer equation of state giving a lower value of the incompressibility than would be reached without quantum effects. The density dependent effective sigma mass is also calculated including such vacuum polarisation effects.

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