  The nonperturbative nature of inter-nucleon interactions is explored by
varying the momentum cutoff of a two-nucleon potential. Conventional force
models, which have large cutoffs, are nonperturbative because of strong
short-range repulsion, the iterated tensor interaction, and the presence of
bound or nearly-bound states. But for low-momentum interactions with cutoffs
around 2 fm^{-1}, the softened potential combined with Pauli blocking leads to
corrections in nuclear matter in the particle-particle channel that are well
converged at second order in the potential, suggesting that perturbation theory
can be used in place of Brueckner resummations. Calculations of nuclear matter
using the low-momentum two-nucleon force V_{low k} with a corresponding
leading-order three-nucleon (3N) force from chiral effective field theory (EFT)
exhibit nuclear binding in the Hartree-Fock approximation, and become less
cutoff dependent with the inclusion of the dominant second-order contributions.
The role of the 3N force is essential to obtain saturation, and the
contribution to the total potential energy is compatible with EFT
power-counting estimates.
