Chiral approach to the rho meson in nuclear matter
Abstract
In this work, the properties of the \rho meson at rest in cold symmetric nuclear matter are studied. We make use of a chiral unitary approach to pion-pion scattering in the vector-isovector channel, calculated from the lowest order Chiral Perturbation Theory (\chi PT) lagrangian including explicit resonance fields. Low energy chiral constraints are considered by matching our expressions to those of one loop \chi PT. To account for the medium corrections, the \rho couples to \pi\pi pairs which are properly renormalized in the nuclear medium, accounting for both p-h and \Delta -h excitations. The terms where the \rho couples directly to the hadrons in the p-h or \Delta -h excitations are also accounted for. In addition, the \rho is also allowed to couple to N^{*}(1520)-h components.