In-medium vector meson masses in a chiral SU(3) model

Abstract

A significant drop of the vector meson masses in nuclear matter is observed in a chiral SU(3) model due to the effects of the baryon Dirac sea. This is taken into account through the summation of baryonic tadpole diagrams in the relativistic Hartree approximation. The appreciable decrease of the in-medium vector meson masses is due to the vacuum polarization effects from the nucleon sector and is not observed in the mean field approximation.