Effect of Correlations on the Contribution of Three-Body Forces to the Binding Energy of Nuclear Matter

Abstract

We investigate the contribution of three-body forces to the binding energy of nuclear matter, including the effects of two- and three-body correlations induced by the two-nucleon forces, and find that it may by approximated using plane-wave three-nucleon states cut off when any interparticle distance is less than about 0.9 fm. Existing calculations can then be used to estimate that three-body forces contribute about 1 MeV to the binding energy.