Theoretical Foundation of the Nuclear Force in QCD and Its Applications to Central and Tensor Forces in Quenched Lattice QCD Simulations

We present full accounts of a method to extract nucleon-nucleon (NN) potentials from the Bethe-Salpter amplitude in lattice QCD. The method is applied to two nucleons on the lattice with quenched QCD simulations. By disentangling the mixing between the S-state and the D-state, we obtain central and tensor potentials in the leading order of the velocity expansion of the non-local NN potential. The spatial structure and the quark mass dependence of the potentials are analyzed in detail.