The Meson Theory of Nuclear Forces and Nuclear Matter

The simplest model of nuclear matter is a collection of point nucleons interacting through a two-body potential that accounts for scattering data and the properties of the deuteron. In order to use and to test this model we must be able, for a given two-body potential, to 'calculate the l 9 corresponding saturation curve of nucle~r matter. The Brueckner-Bethe metho- is one method of making this calculation. The available evidence suggests that, at present, the Brueckner-Bethe method can be used to locate the saturation point with an uncertainty of -1 2-3 MeV in energy and about 0.1 fm in~. This is not very high accuracy, but it is good enough to make a start on physically interesting calculations. In this paper I describe the Brueckner-Bethe method and illustrate it with numerical results. Some of the results are designed to test the accuracy of the method, some are comparisons with variational calculations, and a saturation curve for the full Reid potential is given.