Applications of in-medium chiral dynamics to nuclear structure

A relativistic nuclear energy density functional is developed, guided by two important features that establish connections with chiral dynamics and the symmetry breaking pattern of low-energy QCD: a) strong scalar and vector fields related to in-medium changes of QCD vacuum condensates; b) the long- and intermediate-range interactions generated by one-and two-pion exchange, derived from in-medium chiral perturbation theory, with explicit inclusion of Delta excitations. The results are at the same level of quantitative comparison with data as the best phenomenological relativistic mean-field models.