A new approach to physics of nuclei

We employ the QCD sum rules method for description of nucleons in nuclear matter. We show that this approach provides a consistent formalism for solving various problems of nuclear physics. Such nucleon characteristics as the Dirac effective mass m* and the vector self-energy Σ V are expressed in terms of the in-medium values of QCD condensates. The values of these parameters at saturation density and the dependence on the baryon density and on the neutron-to-proton density ratio is in agreement with the results, obtained by conventional nuclear physics methods. The contributions to m* and Σ V are related to observables and do not require phenomenological parameters. The scalar interaction is shown to be determined by the pion-nucleon σ term. The nonlinear behavior of the scalar condensate may appear to provide a possible mechanism of the saturation. The approach provided reasonable results for renormalization of the axial coupling constant, for the contribution of the strong interactions to the neutron-proton mass difference and for the behavior of the structure functions of the in-medium nucleon. The approach enables to solve the problems which are difficult or unaccessible for conventional nuclear physics methods. The method provides guidelines for building the nuclear forces. The three-body interactions emerge within the method in a natural way. Their rigorous calculation will be possible in the framework of self-consistent calculation in nuclear matter of the scalar condensate and of the nucleon effective mass m*.