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Brueckner Theory of Nuclear Matter with Nonnucleonic Degrees of Freedom and Relativity

For the past 40 years, Brueckner theory has proven to be a most powerful tool to investigate systematically models for nuclear matter. I will give an overview of the work done on nuclear matter theory, starting with the simplest model and proceeding step by step to more sophisticated models by extending the degrees of freedom and including relativity. The final results of a comprehensive hadronic theory of nuclear matter are compared to the predictions by currently fashionable two-nucleon force models. It turns out that a two-nucleon force can, indeed, reproduce those results if the potential is nonlocal, since nonlocality is an inherent quality of the more fundamental fieldtheoretic approach. This nonlocality is crucial for creating sufficient nuclear binding.