In-medium ηN interactions and η nuclear bound states

The in-medium ηN interaction near and below threshold is constructed from a free-space chirally-inspired meson-baryon coupled-channel model that captures the physics of the ^{N *}(1535) baryon resonance. Nucleon Pauli blocking and hadron self-energies are accounted for. The resulting energy-dependent in-medium interaction is used in self-consistent dynamical calculations of η nuclear bound states. Narrow states of width _Γη ≲ 2 MeV are found across the periodic table, beginning with A ≥ 10, for this in-medium coupled-channel interaction model. The binding energy of the 1_sη state increases with A, reaching a value of _B1s(η) ≈ 15 MeV. The implications of our self-consistency procedure are discussed with respect to procedures used in other works.