The Charge Response of a Meson-Correlated Relativistic Fermi Gas

The quasielastic longitudinal electromagnetic response function R_L is studied within the context of a model that extends our previous investigations of pionic correlations and currents. Four mesons are now employed (pion, rho, sigma and omega, via the Bonn potential) and the many-body dynamics are extended to the full random-phase approximation built upon a Hartree-Fock basis. Wherever possible the Lorentz covariance of the problem is respected. The first three energy-weighted moments of the reduced response are computed, namely, the zeroth moment (Coulomb sum rule), the first moment (related to the position of the quasielastic peak) and the second moment (related to the peak width or variance). We discuss how with a modest downward adjustment of the Fermi momentum it is possible to obtain the expected zeroth and second moments; this implies that the nuclear system has a lower density than that required when using the free relativistic Fermi gas and accordingly that the interaction effects are weaker than one might initially find.