Further Reading — Chapter 3: The Nuclear Force

Textbook Treatments

Introductory

• Krane, K.S. Introductory Nuclear Physics (Wiley, 1988), Chapter 4: "The Force Between Nucleons." Clear treatment of the deuteron, scattering lengths, and meson exchange at the advanced undergraduate level. The square well deuteron calculation is presented in detail with numerical examples. This is the most natural companion to the present chapter.

• Wong, S.S.M. Introductory Nuclear Physics, 2nd ed. (Wiley-VCH, 2004), Chapter 3. Good discussion of the operator structure of the nuclear force and the role of symmetries.

Intermediate

• Heyde, K. Basic Ideas and Concepts in Nuclear Physics, 3rd ed. (CRC Press, 2004), Chapter 5. Excellent bridge between the phenomenological and modern perspectives. Includes a careful treatment of the tensor force and its consequences.

• Bertulani, C.A. Nuclear Physics in a Nutshell (Princeton University Press, 2007), Chapters 5--6. Concise but complete treatment including meson exchange models. The discussion of the nuclear force in the context of the nuclear many-body problem is particularly good.

Advanced / Graduate

• Ring, P. and Schuck, P. The Nuclear Many-Body Problem (Springer, 1980), Chapter 4. The standard graduate reference for the nuclear force in the context of many-body theory. The connection between the bare NN interaction and the effective interaction in nuclear medium is treated in depth.

• Machleidt, R. and Slaus, I. "The nucleon-nucleon interaction," Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics 27, R69 (2001). Comprehensive review of the meson exchange picture and high-precision phenomenological potentials.

Original Papers

Foundational

• Yukawa, H. "On the interaction of elementary particles. I." Proceedings of the Physico-Mathematical Society of Japan 17, 48--57 (1935). The original paper predicting the meson. Remarkably clear and readable even today. Available in English in the original publication.

• Powell, C.F., Lattes, C.M.G., and Occhialini, G.P.S. "Observations on the tracks of slow mesons in photographic emulsions." Nature 160, 453--456 (1947). The discovery of the pion.

• Kellogg, J.M.B., Rabi, I.I., Ramsey, N.F., and Zacharias, J.R. "The magnetic moments of the proton and the deuteron." Physical Review 56, 728 (1939). The first measurement of the deuteron quadrupole moment.

High-Precision Potentials

• Wiringa, R.B., Stoks, V.G.J., and Schiavilla, R. "Accurate nucleon-nucleon potential with charge-independence breaking." Physical Review C 51, 38 (1995). The Argonne $v_{18}$ paper. Required reading for anyone working with nuclear forces.

• Machleidt, R. "High-precision, charge-dependent Bonn nucleon-nucleon potential." Physical Review C 63, 024001 (2001). The CD-Bonn potential.

• Stoks, V.G.J., Klomp, R.A.M., Terheggen, C.P.F., and de Swart, J.J. "Construction of high-quality NN potential models." Physical Review C 49, 2950 (1994). The Nijmegen partial wave analysis and potentials.

Chiral Effective Field Theory

• Weinberg, S. "Nuclear forces from chiral lagrangians." Physics Letters B 251, 288--292 (1990). The paper that launched the chiral EFT program for nuclear forces.

• Weinberg, S. "Effective chiral lagrangians for nucleon-pion interactions and nuclear forces." Nuclear Physics B 363, 3--18 (1991). The companion paper establishing the power counting.

• Entem, D.R. and Machleidt, R. "Accurate charge-dependent nucleon-nucleon potential at fourth order of chiral perturbation theory." Physical Review C 68, 041001(R) (2003). The first N$^3$LO chiral potential with $\chi^2/\text{datum} \approx 1$.

• Epelbaum, E., Krebs, H., and Meissner, U.-G. "Improved chiral nucleon-nucleon potential up to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order." European Physical Journal A 51, 53 (2015). State-of-the-art semilocal chiral potential.

Three-Nucleon Forces

• Fujita, J. and Miyazawa, H. "Pion theory of three-body forces." Progress of Theoretical Physics 17, 360 (1957). The original paper on the two-pion-exchange three-nucleon force.

• van Kolck, U. "Few-nucleon forces from chiral Lagrangians." Physical Review C 49, 2932 (1994). The first derivation of the chiral three-nucleon force at N$^2$LO.

• Otsuka, T., Suzuki, T., Holt, J.D., Schwenk, A., and Akaishi, Y. "Three-body forces and the limit of oxygen isotopes." Physical Review Letters 105, 032501 (2010). The oxygen drip line prediction.

Review Articles

• Machleidt, R. and Entem, D.R. "Chiral effective field theory and nuclear forces." Physics Reports 503, 1--75 (2011). The most comprehensive review of chiral EFT for nuclear forces. Essential reading for graduate students entering the field.

• Epelbaum, E., Hammer, H.-W., and Meissner, U.-G. "Modern theory of nuclear forces." Reviews of Modern Physics 81, 1773 (2009). Authoritative review of the chiral EFT framework with emphasis on the power counting and renormalization.

• Hammer, H.-W., Konig, S., and van Kolck, U. "Nuclear effective field theory: status and perspectives." Reviews of Modern Physics 92, 025004 (2020). Recent review covering both pionless and chiral EFT, with discussion of the renormalization group and uncertainty quantification.

• Hergert, H., Bogner, S.K., Morris, T.D., Schwenk, A., and Tsukiyama, K. "The in-medium similarity renormalization group: a novel ab initio method for nuclei." Physics Reports 621, 165 (2016). Review of how modern nuclear forces are used in many-body calculations.

Data Resources

• Nijmegen NN scattering database: nn-online.org. The comprehensive database of nucleon-nucleon scattering data and partial wave analyses. Essential for anyone fitting or testing nuclear force models.

• TUNL Nuclear Data Evaluation: tunl.duke.edu. Evaluated nuclear data for light nuclei ($A \leq 20$), including binding energies, level schemes, and reaction data.

• National Nuclear Data Center (NNDC): nndc.bnl.gov. Comprehensive nuclear data including masses (AME2020), levels, and decay data.