Self-consistent Green’s functions calculation of the nucleon mean-free path

Transport coefficients provide a unique insight into the near-equilibrium behavior of quantum many-body systems. The mean-free path, λ, of a particle within a dense medium is a basic transport coefficient, at the basis of several theoretical concepts and closely related to experimentally measured quantities. Green’s functions techniques are particularly well suited to study such transport properties, since they are naturally formulated in the time domain. We present a calculation of the mean-free path of a nucleon in symmetric nuclear matter using self-consistent ladder self-energies extended to the complex energy plane. Our results indicate that, for energies above 50 MeV at densities close to saturation, a nucleon has a mean-free path of 4 to 5 femtometers.