Abstract
We address the connection between the saturating behavior of infinite nuclear matter and the description of finite nuclei based on state-of-the-art chiral two- and three-nucleon forces. We observe that chiral two- and three-nucleon interactions (at (NLO)-L-2 and at (NLO)-L-3), which have been found to predict realistic binding energies and radii for a wide range of finite nuclei (from p-shell nuclei up to nickel isotopes) are unable to saturate infinite nuclear matter. On the other hand, it has been shown that, when the fits of the C-D and C-E couplings of the chiral three-nucleon interactions include the constraint of nuclear matter saturation in addition to, as is typically the case, the triton binding energy, medium-mass nuclei are underbound and their radii are systematically too large. We discuss this apparent inconsistency and perform test calculations for various scenarios to shed light on the issue.