BARYON MAPPINGS APPLIED TO THE 3-COLOR DELTA-MODEL

A recently proposed baryon mapping of colorless three-quark clusters i s applied to a three-color delta model in the infinite nuclear matter limit, to assess its usefulness in the presence of spatial three-quark correlations. Treating the resulting baryon Hamiltonian in Hartree-Fo ck approximation exactly reproduces the energy per quark of the model through second order in the density. Deviations show up in higher orde rs, however, most likely reflecting the need for an improved descripti on of the short-range repulsion between baryons beyond that of the Har tree-Fock approximation.