Possible Validity of the Relativistic Hartree-Fock Approximation in Nuclear Physics

Although nonrelativistic estimates of single-particle kinetic-energy expectation values appear to have invalidated the Hartree-Fock relation between total binding energy, single-particle eigenvalues, and kinetic-energy expectation values, a recent relativistic Hartree calculation has been successful at reproducing finite nuclear properties for closed-shell nuclei. Using the ${}_{}{}^{16}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{O}$ nucleus, it is demonstrated that this success is due to a reduction in the expectation values of the relativistic analog of the kinetic-energy operator.