  We study a particular class of relativistic nuclear energy density
functionals in which only nucleon degrees of freedom are explicitly used in the
construction of effective interaction terms. Short-distance (high-momentum)
correlations, as well as intermediate and long-range dynamics, are encoded in
the medium (nucleon density) dependence of the strength functionals of an
effective interaction Lagrangian. Guided by the density dependence of
microscopic nucleon self-energies in nuclear matter, a phenomenological ansatz
for the density-dependent coupling functionals is accurately determined in
self-consistent mean-field calculations of binding energies of a large set of
axially deformed nuclei. The relationship between the nuclear matter volume,
surface and symmetry energies, and the corresponding predictions for nuclear
masses is analyzed in detail. The resulting best-fit parametrization of the
nuclear energy density functional is further tested in calculations of
properties of spherical and deformed medium-heavy and heavy nuclei, including
binding energies, charge radii, deformation parameters, neutron skin thickness,
and excitation energies of giant multipole resonances.
