ABSTRACT
In many theoretical approaches, the nuclear mean field is described by means of the Hartree-Fock variational approximation. An effective interaction is introduced and the average potential is identified with the first-order contribution to the perturbation expansion of the mean field in powers of the strength of this effective interaction. The forces are determined such that a number of global nuclear properties (binding energy, nuclear charge and mass radii, density distributions, etc) are reproduced in lowest order. This Hartree-Fock approach, although clearly having its limitations, has been shown to be a very appropriate, lowest-order theory of an interacting A-body nuclear problem.
