The Quark Pauli Principle and the Saturation of Nuclear Matter at Normal Density-Inequality Constraint Formalism

The problem of understanding the short-distance repulsion of the nucleon-nucleon force, necessary for nuclear stability, has existed since the field of nuclear physics began. We consider the hypothesis that the quark Pauli principle is responsiblefor that repulsion. The starting point is that the quark phase-space density is bounded by unity. Implementation of this as an inequality constraint equation on a relativistic Lagrangian that contains nucleons and scalar mesons can lead to the saturation of (N= Z) infinite nuclear matter with reasonable values of the binding energy and density. One possible consequence of the calculation is that nucleon occupation probabilities are depleted for nucleon momenta less than about 100 MeV/c. Such matter is termed to be “quarkyonic”. Measurements of the (e,e’p) cross section could rule out this idea.