Nuclear many-body dynamics constrained by QCD and chiral symmetry

We present a novel description of nuclear many-body systems, both for nuclear matter and finite nuclei, emphasizing the connection with the condensate structure of the QCD ground state and spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. Lorentz scalar and vector mean fields are introduced in accordance with QCD sum rules. Nuclear binding arises from pionic fluctuations, using in-medium chiral perturbation theory up to three-loop order. Ground-state properties of ¹⁶O and ⁴⁰Ca are calculated. The built-in QCD constraints reduce the number of input parameters significantly in comparison with purely phenomenological relativistic mean-field approaches.