Su(3) String-flip Potential Models and Nuclear Matter

For over 50 years attempts have been made to explain the properties of nuclear matter in terms of constituent nucleons with very little success. Here we will investigate one class of many possible models, string-flip potential models, in which flux-tubes are connected between quarks (in a gas/plasma) to give a minimal overall field configuration. A general overview of the current status of these models, along with some of our recently finished work, shall be given. It shall be shown that these models seem promising in that they do get most of the bulk properties of nuclear matter correct with the exception of nuclear binding. Finally we will conclude with a brief discussion on ways to improve the string-flip potential models in an attempt to obtain nuclear binding (currently we are investigating short range one-gluon exchange effects – some preliminary results shall be mentioned). The main objective of our work is to attempt to describe nuclear matter in terms of its constituent quarks. A difficult task indeed, for over the past 50 years many attempts have been made with very little success. The main difficulty is due to the nonperturbative nature of QCD. The most rigorous method for handling multiquark systems to date is lattice QCD, but given the magnitude of our problem it appears unlikely to be useful in the near future, due to its computationally intensive nature. As a result we must consider more phenomenological means. The basic idea here is to construct models which are motivated by lattice QCD theory and nucleon based models of nuclear matter. A very crude model should be able to get most of bulk properties of nuclear matter correct: i.e. • Nucleon gas at low densities with no van der Waals forces. • Nucleon binding at higher densities. • Nucleon swelling and saturation of nuclear forces with increasing density. • Quark-gluon plasma at extremely high densities. The are many models out there that attempt to fill this shopping list but we have found none that covers it completely.