What is the strong nuclear force between proton and neutron in deuteron?

The nucleus of deuterium, called a deuteron, contains one proton and one neutron. What is strong nuclear force between them?

Answer

The solid state analogue of the force between a proton and a neutron is the Van der Waals forces between the molecules.

These forces are overflow forces from the central charges and the magnetic fields of the electrons and nuclei which comprise the electromgnetic environment of molecules. These are dipole and higher pole forces that can be attractive or repulsive creating the chemistry and solid state of the world around us.

The problem with nuclear forces is that in contrast to just electric and magnetic dipoles and quadrupoles etc, we have three colored quarks interacting with three colored quarks plus a large number of colored gluons in the sea. You can think of each color as a type of charge which will have its colored analogue of electric and magnetic fields. The complexity is enormous and the forces cannot be approximated simply as the case with electromagnetic forces.

Fortunately we have the quantum mechanical shell models which do not have to enter into the quark details and which work very well and precisely for nuclear physics problems, the analogue of the Van der Waals calculations.