Chiral approach to the rho meson in nuclear matter Original Research Article

In this work, the properties of the ρ 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 (χPT) Lagrangian including explicit resonance fields. Low-energy chiral constraints are considered by matching our expressions to those of one-loop χPT. To account for the medium corrections, the ρ couples to ππ pairs which are properly renormalized in the nuclear medium, accounting for both p–h and Δ–h excitations. The terms where the ρ couples directly to the hadrons in the p–h or Δ–h excitations are also accounted for. In addition, the ρ is also allowed to couple to N∗(1520)–h components.