Asymmetric nuclear matter in the relativistic Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approach

We present a calculation of asymmetric nuclear matter properties at zero temperature in a relativistic Brueckner-Hartree-Fock framework. Following other calculations the components of the self-energies are extracted by projecting on Lorentz-invariant amplitudes. It is shown that for asymmetric nuclear matter one needs a sixth invariant. We present a set of invariants which in the limit of symmetric nuclear matter reduces to the conventional set. We argue that the existence of such a properly behaving set is also crucial for the application of the projection method in symmetric nuclear matter. Results for the equation of state and other observables are presented. Special attention is paid to an analysis in terms of mean-field effective coupling constants. Apart from the usual ones we also find significant strength in the isovector scalar channel, which can be interpreted as an effective delta meson.