The nucleon-nucleon interaction

Abstract

Recent developements in our understanding of the fundamental nucleon-nucleon interaction are reviewed. Among the topics considered are (1) the so-called high-precision nucleon-nucleon potentials that emerged in the mid 1990s, (2) progress in the microscopic description of the intermediate-range part of the nucleon-nucleon interaction in terms of correlated pion-pion and rho-pion exchange and (3) efforts towards a quantitative descripton of the nucleon-nucleon interaction utilizing methods based on effective field theory.