image meson under partial restoration of chiral symmetry in nuclear medium

In-medium modification of the image mass is discussed in the context of partial restoration of chiral symmetry in nuclear medium. We emphasize that the image anomaly effects cause the image–η mass difference necessarily through the chiral symmetry breaking. As a consequence, the image mass is expected to be reduced by order of 100 MeV in nuclear matter where about 30% reduction of chiral symmetry takes place. The strong attraction relating to the image mass generation eventually implies that there should be also a strong attractive interaction in the scalar channel of the image–N two-body system. We find that the attraction can be strong enough to form a bound state.