Dilute Nuclear Matter in Chiral Perturbation Theory

Abstract

We use chiral perturbation theory to compute the effective nucleon propagator in an expansion about low density in the chiral limit. We neglect four-nucleon interactions and focus on pion exchange. Evaluating the nucleon self-energy on its mass shell to leading order, we show that the effective nucleon mass increases by a small amount. We discuss the relevance of our results to the structure of compact stars.

Comments: Manuscript rewritten, especially conclusions about mass shifts; contact terms cannot be neglected. Computation unchanged