Nucleon properties in the nuclear medium

Recent developments in the many-body theory of interacting fermions are discussed employing a self-consistent Green function approach. This scheme is outlined and its application to nuclear systems is presented. Special attention is paid to the consistent inclusion of short-range and long-range correlations induced by realistic nucleon-nucleon interactions. Such correlations lead to occupation probabilities which deviate from the simple mean-field or shell-model description. The scheme is extended to incorporate relativistic effects. Also applications of field theoretical models for hadrons in a nuclear medium and their relation to QCD are discussed.