Hadron properties in a nuclear medium and effective nuclear force from quarks: the quark-meson coupling model

Abstract: We give a short review of the quark-meson coupling (QMC) model, the quark-based model of finite nuclei and hadron interactions in a nuclear medium, highlighting on the relationship with the Skyrme effective nuclear forces. The model is based on a mean field description of nonoverlapping nucleon MIT bags bound by the self-consistent exchange of Lorentz-scalar-isoscalar, Lorentz-vector-isoscalar, and Lorentz-vector-isovector meson fields directly coupled to the light quarks up and down. In conventional nuclear physics the Skyrme effective forces are very popular, but, there is no satisfactory interpretation of the parameters appearing in the Skyrme forces. Comparing a many-body Hamiltonian generated by the QMC model in the zero-range limit with that of the Skyrme force, it is possible to obtain a remarkable agreement between the Skyrme force and the QMC effective interaction. Furthermore, it is shown that 3-body and higher order N-body forces are naturally included in the QMC-generated effective interaction.