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Introduction

Homogeneous infinite nuclear matter (INM) is widely used to study and characterize nuclear interactions. Some INM properties, such as the saturation density, energy per particle, and asymmetry coefficient, are coherent, and others, such as the incompressibility $K_\infty$ and the sum-rule enhancement factor, are related to excitations and can be used as pseudo-observables to compare with predictions of nuclear forces. INM properties are also often used to adjust the parameters of effective interactions for self-consistent calculations. These properties at large asymmetry are key ingredients for the description of neutron stars. (See, e.g., Refs. [23,69] for a discussion on the mean-field level.)

Most papers deal with spin-saturated INM, in which the time-odd channels of the interaction discussed here do not contribute. Nothing is known about spin-polarized INM, which actually may play some role in neutron stars. A stability criterion for this exotic system, derived in Ref. [70], was even used to adjust the parameters of the SLyx forces in Ref.[23,24]. We do not consider tensor forces in this work. Their contribution to the properties of polarized INM were explored, e.g., in Ref. [71].


Jacek Dobaczewski
2002-03-15