Nuclear Force from String Theory

Understand

We compute nuclear force in a holographic model of QCD on the basis of a D4-D8 brane configuration in type IIA string theory.

• Repulsive core of nucleons is quite important in nuclear physics, but its origin has not been well-understood in strongly-coupled QCD.
• We find that string theory via gauge/string duality deduces this repulsive core at short distance between nucleons.
• Since baryons in the model are realized as solitons given by Yang-Mills instanton configuration on flavor D8-branes, ADHM construction of two instantons probes well the nucleon interaction at short scale, which provides the nuclear force quantitatively.