CONSISTENT TREATMENT OF ISOBAR DEGREES OF FREEDOM IN NUCLEAR-MATTER

It is argued that the present situation in nuclear matter requires an explicit description of the 2π exchange contribution to the NN interaction providing the intermediate-range attraction. Especially, a realistic treatment of isobar degrees of freedom is strongly suggested. A suitable scheme is described, which starts from a field-theoretic Hamiltonian and uses old-fashioned perturbation theory consistently in the two- and the many-body problem. Numerical results (for NN scattering data and nuclear matter binding) emerging from such an approach are briefly outlined. © 1979.