Nuclear forces and quark degrees of freedom

The description of the short-range part of the nucleon-nucleon forces in terms of quark degrees of freedom is tested against experimental observables. The model considered for this purpose consists of short range forces given by the quark cluster model and long and medium range forces by well established meson exchanges. The investigation is performed using different quark cluster models coming from different sets of quark-quark interaction. The predictions of this model are compared directly with the experimental observables. Agreement with the existing pp and np world set of data is poor. This suggests that the current description of the nucleon-nucleon interaction, at short distances, in the framework of the non-relativistic quark models, is at present only qualitative.