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We review a large body of predictions obtained within the framework of relativistic meson theory together with the Dirac-Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approach to nuclear matter and finite nuclei. The success of this method has been largely related to its ability to take into account important three-body effects. Therefore, the overarching theme of this paper is the interpretation of the so-called 'Dirac effects' as an effective three-nucleon force. We address the equation of state (EoS) of isospin symmetric and asymmetric nucleonic matter and related issues, ranging from proton and neutron density distributions to momentum distributions and short-range correlations. A central part of the discussion is devoted to the optical model potential for nucleon-nucleus scattering. We also take the opportunity to explore similarities and differences with predictions based on the increasingly popular chiral effective field theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The microscopic properties and superfluidity of the inner crust in neutron stars are investigated in the framework of the relativistic mean field(RMF) model and BCS theory. The Wigner-Seitz(W-S) cell of inner crust is composed of neutron-rich nuclei immersed in a sea of dilute, homogeneous neutron gas. The pairing properties of nucleons in the W-S cells are treated in BCS theory with Gogny interaction. In this work, we emphasize on the choice of the boundary conditions in the RMF approach and superfluidity of the inner crust. Three kinds of boundary conditions are suggested. The properties of the W-S cells with the three kinds of boundary conditions are investigated. The neutron density distributions in the RMF and Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov(HFB) models are compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]