Description of intermediate- and short-range NN nuclear force within a covariant effective field theory

Abstract The present paper is aimed to developing an effective field theory in the GeV region to describe consistently both elastic and inelastic NN scattering in a fully covariant way. In this development we employ our novel s -channel mechanism of NN interaction at intermediate and short ranges assuming a formation of the six-quark bag dressed with basic meson fields such as π , σ , ρ , and ω in the intermediate state. The peripheral part of the interaction is governed by t -channel one- and two-pion exchanges described fairly well by chiral perturbation theory. The σ -meson dressing should be especially important for the stabilization of the bag due to a high coupling constant of the σ -meson with the bag and also a strong interaction between the σ -field and space symmetric quark core |s 6 [6]〉. This stabilization of the intermediate dressed bag (which shifts the mass of the bag downward to NN threshold) will be crucially important for the description of π , 2 π , ρ , and ω -meson production in NN collisions, and, in particular, for the correct description of π 0 production near threshold. So that, we expect that the results of the present work will lead to a deeper understanding the short- and intermediate-range nuclear forces and internucleon correlations in nuclei.