Recent achievements in nuclear forces theory open new perspectives for the
next decade of low energy nuclear physics, bringing together people from very
different communities. Although many developments remain to be done, the
possibility to directly use QCD to describe nuclear system is a major challenge
that is within reach. In this introduction to the 2009 International
Joliot-Curie School (EJC2009), new trends in the strong nuclear interaction are
summarized starting from quarks and ending with finite or infinite nuclear
systems. At different energy scales, selected new concepts and ideas have been
discussed in a rather simple way. Recent advances in the theory of nuclear
forces, thanks to chiral perturbation and effective field theories, have led to
a new generation of strong nuclear interaction particularly suited to low
energy nuclear physics. The interesting aspects of new interactions compared to
conventional forces are underlined. Recent achievements in ab initio theories
that directly start from the bare nucleon-nucleon interaction and their key
role to understand the three-body force are illustrated. Finally, future
perspectives for standard nuclear physics theories, namely Shell Model and
Energy Density Functional, are discussed.Comment: 26 pages, 28 figures--Introduction Lecture to the 2009 International
Joliot-Curie School, Lacanau, France, 27 Sept.-3 Oct. 200
