Recent Progress and New Challenges in Isospin Physics with Heavy-Ion Reactions

By Bao-An Li, Lie-Wen Chen, C. Ko. 2008

942 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The ultimate goal of studying isospin physics via heavy-ion reactions with neutron-rich, stable and/or radioactive nuclei is to explore the isospin dependence of in-medium nuclear effective interactions and the equation of state of neutron-rich nuclear matter, particularly the isospin-dependent term in the equation of state, i.e., the density dependence of the symmetry energy. Because of its great importance for understanding many phenomena in both nuclear physics and astrophysics, the study of the density dependence of the nuclear symmetry energy has been the main focus of the intermediate-energy heavy-ion physics community during the last decade, and significant progress has been achieved both experimentally and theoretically. In particular, a number of phenomena or observables have been identified as sensitive probes to the density dependence of the nuclear symmetry energy. Experimental studies have confirmed some of these interesting isospin-dependent effects and allowed us to constrain relatively stringently the symmetry energy at sub-saturation densities. The impacts of this constrained density dependence of the symmetry energy on the properties of neutron stars have also been studied, and they were found to be very useful for the astrophysical community. With new opportunities provided by the various radioactive beam facilities being constructed around the world, the study of isospin physics is expected to remain one of the forefront research areas in nuclear physics. In this report, we review the major progress achieved during the last decade in isospin physics with heavy ion reactions and discuss future challenges to the most important issues in this field.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e32bd046c2bfa13b874d3c2603970eb36556f599

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

Progress in Constraining Nuclear Symmetry Energy Using Neutron Star Observables Since GW170817 (2021, background): “Moreover, around (1− 2)ρ0 the symmetry energy contribution to the NS pressure competes strongly with that from SNM [24].”
CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVA EXPLOSIONS TRIGGERED BY A QUARK–HADRON PHASE TRANSITION DURING THE EARLY POST-BOUNCE PHASE (2010, background): “The symmetry energy can be defined by the difference of the energy per baryon of pure neutron matter, that is Yp = 0, and isospin symmetric matter with Yp = 0.5 (see Li et al. 2008) Esym(nB) ∝ E A ∣ ∣ ∣ ∣ nB ,Yp=0 − E A ∣ ∣ ∣ ∣ nB ,Yp=0.5 .”
NUCLEAR CONSTRAINTS ON PROPERTIES OF NEUTRON STAR CRUSTS (2009, methodology): “The MDI interaction has been used extensively in studying heavy-ion reactions (Li et al. 2008), liquid–gas phase transitions in neutron-rich matter (Xu et al. 2007a, 2008; Li et al. 2007), and several structural properties (Li & Steiner 2006; Krastev & Li 2007; Krastev et al. 2008a) and…”
Combined Constraints on the Equation of State of Dense Neutron-rich Matter from Terrestrial Nuclear Experiments and Observations of Neutron Stars (2018, background): “…tensor force due to the ρ-meson exchange makes the EOS of SNM increase faster with density than that of pure neutron matter where the tensor force is much weaker, the Esym(ρ) decreases or even becomes negative at high densities (Pandharipande et al. 1972; Wiringa et al. 1988; Li et al. 2008).”
The Nuclear Symmetry Energy (2016, methodology): “the elliptic flow has been studied with model calculations to test its usefulness as a probe of the stiffness of the symmetry energy [232, 233, 234].”