Repulsive short-range three-nucleon interaction

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Abstract
The three-nucleon interaction that is implied by the pion and the effective scalar and vector meson exchange components of the nucleon-nucleon interaction arises from the excitation of intermediate nucleon-antinucleon pairs. Using several wave-function models we show that this interaction is repulsive, reducing the calculated binding energy of the trinucleons by about 200–300 keV. The contributions of intermediate N(1440) resonances (and the same meson exchanges) to this three-nucleon interaction are also estimated and shown to be small.