Negative-parity nucleon excited state in nuclear matter

Spectral functions of the nucleon and its negative-parity excited state in nuclear matter are studied by using QCD sum rules and the maximum entropy method (MEM). It is found that in-medium modifications of the spectral functions are attributed mainly to density dependencies of the <q ¯q > and <q^†q > condensates. The MEM reproduces the lowest-energy peaks of both the positive- and negative-parity nucleon states at finite density up to ρ ∼ρ_N (normal nuclear matter density). As the density grows, the residue of the nucleon ground state decreases gradually while the residue of the lowest negative-parity excited state increases slightly. On the other hand, the positions of the peaks, which correspond to the total energies of these states, are almost density independent for both parity states. The density dependencies of the effective masses and vector self-energies are also extracted by assuming phenomenological mean-field-type propagators for the peak states. We find that, as the density increases, the nucleon effective mass decreases while the vector self-energy increases. The density dependence of these quantities for the negative-parity state on the other hand turns out to be relatively weak.