This Minority Research Initiation (MRI) Planning Grant will provide support for the investigator to conduct a literature search, attend professional conferences, confer with experts in Nuclear Science, consider a location for a possible sabbatical, and select an appropriate computer system, to calculate sets of phase shifts for analyzing the two-nucleon problems. These activities will lead to the development of a competitive NSF proposal to examine the use of interacting bosons as carriers of the nuclear force. In addition, the work will eventually lead to the theortical derivation of a realistic expression that represents the strong nuclear force that is crucial for a guantitative understanding of nuclear and subnuclear phenomena.
