The effect of higher partial waves (J⩾3) on the nuclear matter binding energy and saturation density

The available phenomenological nucleon–nucleon (NN) potentials usually fit the experimental phase shifts up to a maximum partial wave (energy). In this work we intend to use the lowest order constrained variational (LOCV) method to calculate the binding energy and the saturation density of nuclear matter (NM) up to the different maximum partial waves (Jmax), and investigate their effects on the saturation properties of NM. The NN potentials such as the Reid86, the Δ–Reid68, the Reid93 and the Av18 interactions are used to calculate the saturation energy–density curve of NM with different Jmax. It is shown that the higher partial waves have sizable effect on the properties of NM, and it is not possible to ignore them simply. Finally, the contribution of various channel energies in terms of Jmax are presented and discussed, and once again concluded that the inclusion of channel dependence of correlation functions are more important than to parameterize them to reduce the amount of computational procedure or to take into account the many-body cluster terms.