Dynamic Pion Studies in Nuclear Matter

A framework is developed which allows the extension of current realistic Nucleon-Nucleon interactions to include pionic degrees of freedom. A prescription for transforming any static pion model to one containing explicit energy dependence is provided. We show that adding energy dependence to the pionic component of the Nucleon-Nucleon interaction reduces the component of D-state wave function in the deuteron while adding a non-negligible chance of finding the deuteron in an NNπ state. Retrofitting the static pion Reid soft-core potential with dynamic pions entailed a necessary refit of the parameters in the central and tensor parts of the potential to phase shifts and deuteron data. Dynamic pions offer a natural and physical way to handle inelasticities in phase shifts above pion-production threshold. Other observables, such as the: p,2p) analyzing power Ay, which indicate explicit energy dependence, have resisted many attempts at modeling using static pion models, but dynamic pion models show some promise at explaining these data. Finally, the effects of dynamic pions in nuclear matter are explored, and it is shown that even below pion-production threshold, allowing pions to propagate leads to a decrease in saturation density without significant change to the overall binding energy per nucleon.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Physics

Year dc:date.available

2011

Author dc:creator

• Morris, Jonathan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Willem Dickhoff

• Nuclear physics

Language dc:language

English (en)

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7936/K7959FN2

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:openscholarship.wustl.edu:etd-1620