An improvement to these simpler single-nucleon potentials is given by the Hartree-Fock method, where the variational principle is used to define a mean-field which the nucleons move in. There are many different classes of mean-field methods. An important difference between these methods and the simpler parametrized mean-field potentials like the harmonic oscillator and the Woods-Saxon potentials, is that the resulting equations contain information about the nuclear forces present in our models for solving Schroedinger's equation. Hartree-Fock and other mean-field methods like density functional theory form core topics in later lectures.