Nuclear forces and quark degrees of freedom

Abstract
We study the effects of quark degrees of freedom on the nucleon-nucleon observables. The model we consider is built from the Paris potential for large and intermediate distances, supplemented by the quark cluster model for the core. The fit to the existing pp data set is not good. These results suggest that the good description of the NN interaction at short distances by quark models sometimes claimed in the literature could be questioned.