Quarks in nuclear medium

Using the quark-meson coupling (QMC) model we study nuclear matter from the point of view of quark degrees of freedom. As the nucleon model we adopt the MIT bag model and the relativistic constituent quark model, where a square well and harmonic oscillator potentials are used to confine the quarks. We introduce the Lorentz-vector type confining potential as well as the Lorentz-scalar type one in order to examine how the vector confining potential contributes to the properties of the nucleon and nuclear matter. Next, we perform a re-definition of the scalar field in matter and transform the QMC model to a QHD-type model with a non-linear scalar potential. The result obtained from QMC is then compared with the potentials which are determined so as to fit various properties of finite nuclei and nuclear matter in relativistic mean-field models. The QMC model provides the parameters κ ∼ 20 − 40 (fm −1) and λ ∼ 80 − 400 for the standard, non-linear scalar potential. We discuss a relationship between the QMC and QHD-type models in detail.