Polarization effects in relativistic pairing in nuclear matter

We discuss the effects of medium polarization on nuclear pairing in the context of the relativistic Hartree–Fock–Bogoliubov (HFB) approximation in the σ–ω model. The medium polarization effects on the scalar and vector meson masses, and on the pairing gap are shown for several values of the coupling constants scaled by a parameter x. We find that the medium polarization increases the magnitude of the pairing gap at low density while the vacuum polarization decreases its magnitude at higher density.