Recovering Relativistic Nuclear Phenomenology from the Quark-Meson Coupling Model

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The quark-meson coupling (QMC) model for nuclear matter, which describes nuclear matter as non-overlapping MIT bags bound by the self-consistent exchange of scalar and vector mesons is modified by the introduction of a density dependent bag constant. It is found that when the bag constant is significantly reduced in nuclear medium with respect to its free space value, large canceling isoscalar Lorentz scalar and vector potentials for the nucleon in nuclear matter emerge naturally. Such potentials are comparable to those suggested by relativistic nuclear phenomenology. This suggests that the modification of the bag constant in the nuclear medium may play an important role in low- and medium-energy nuclear physics.