Development of a Super Soft Core Potential Model of the Nucleon-Nucleon Interaction

Abstract

It is by now well known that the elastic scattering data do not require the nucleon-nucleon potential to contain infinite or even strong finite repulsion at short distance. This was shown in the ¹S₀ state by Srivastava and Sprung¹ who constructed a number of ‘super soft core’ potentials whose maximum repulsion ranged from 70 MeV to 260 MeV. A rough criterion for an SSC potential is that in nuclear matter the second order perturbation theory terms are 10 to 20% of the corresponding first order ones. At about the same time, Pires, de Tourreil and Gogny (PDG)² presented a complete potential, choosing as radial form a sum of gaussians. Their intention was to fit not only the elastic scattering data, but also nuclear matter saturation properties and the radii of finite nuclei in the Hartree Fock approximation. Modest agreement with all three criteria was obtained, but at the expense of a high quality fit to phase shifts, especially in the singlet odd state.