Effects of angular correlations on particle-particle propagation in infinite nuclear matter

The effect of angular correlations on self-consistent solutions for single-particle (sp) potentials in infinite nuclear matter is investigated. To this end we treat explicitly the angular dependence of the particle-particle (pp) propagator in Brueckner-Hartree-Fock (BHF) equation for the g matrix. It is observed that the exact angular dependence of the pp propagator yields highly fluctuating structures, posing stringent difficulties in the actual search of self-consistent solutions for the sp energy. A perturbative approach is presented to evaluate the effect of the angular correlations in the self-consistent solutions. Solutions at Fermi momenta kF in the range 1.20 - 1.75 fm-1 are reported using Argonne v18 nucleon- nucleon potential. Although the sp potentials are sensitive to the treatment of the angular behaviour of the propagator, such sensitivity appears at momenta well above the Fermi surface. As a result, the saturation properties of symmetric nuclear matter differ marginally from those calculated using angle-averaged energy denominators in pp propagators.