Recovering relativistic nuclear phenomenology from the quark-meson coupling model☆

Abstract The quark-meson coupling (QMC) model for nuclear matter, which describes nuclear matter as non-overlapping MIT bags bound by the self-consistent exchange of scalar and vector mesons is modified by the introduction of a density dependent bag constant. The density dependence of the bag constant is related to that of the in-medium effective nucleon mass through a scaling ansatz suggested by partial chiral symmetry restoration in nuclear matter. This modification overcomes drawbacks of the QMC model and leads to the recovery of the essential features of relativistic nuclear phenomenology. This suggests that the modification of the bag constant in the nuclear medium may play an important role in low- and medium-energy nuclear physics.