Relativistic Effects and Three-Nucleon Forces in Nuclear Matter and Nuclei

We review a large body of predictions obtained within the framework of relativistic meson theory together with the Dirac-Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approach to nuclear matter and finite nuclei. The success of this method has been largely related to its ability to take into account important three-body effects. Therefore, the overarching theme of this article is the interpretation of the so-called "Dirac effects" as an effective three-nucleon force. We address the equation of state of isospin symmetric and asymmetric nucleonic matter and related issues, ranging from proton and neutron density distributions to momentum distributions and short-range correlations. A central part of the discussion is devoted to the optical model potential for nucleon-nucleus scattering. We also take the opportunity to explore similarities and differences with predictions based on the increasingly popular chiral effective field theory.