From Phenomenological to Chiral Interactions

By now, the nuclear force problem has been with us for some 80+ years. This history can be almost symmetrically divided into 40 years of phenomenology (including meson “theory”) and 40 years of attempts to relate the problem to the fundamental theory of strong interactions, QCD. Not surprisingly, the transition from one era to the other was long and painful and a great example for how research in theory is try and error. Based upon Weinberg’s proposal of 30 years ago, chiral effective field theory based interactions emerged, which I will contrast with traditional nuclear forces.