Tensor Correlations in Nuclear Matter: Three-Body Effects

Abstract

The Jastrow method has been extended to the treatment of tensor forces by the incorporation of suitable spin and isospin dependence into the correlation operators. Here the three-body contributions to the factor-cluster expansion of the energy expectation value are evaluated for nuclear matter, supplementing the evaluation of the one- and two-body contributions already reported in the first paper of this series. Complete numerical results are presented for three semirealistic hard-core potentials containing differing mixtures of central and tensor components. The three-body corrections result in a distinct improvement of the saturation behavior of the approximate energy per particle. Nevertheless, these calculations should be regarded as still exploratory rather than final in the sense that the most intelligent (i.e., a suitably restricted) choice of radial dependence has not yet been determined for the correlation functions.