Effect of three-body ΛNN long-range potential in nuclear matter

The effect of the two-pion-exchange ΛNN force on the binding of a Λ in nuclear matter is considered using perturbation theory. It is pointed out that the contribution of the dominant noncentral part of the ΛNN potential to BΛ is extremely sensitive to nucleon-nucleon (NN) correlation. The long-range part of the ΛNN force (for ΛN distances > 0.6 fm) gives a repulsive contribution of a few MeV, but this number can not be predicted unless the NN correlation function is accurately known.