Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 16: Structure and Dynamics of Nuclei 3

HK 16.6: Talk

Monday, March 23, 2015, 18:15–18:30, T/HS2

Thermodynamics of the symmetry energy and the equation of state of isospin-asymmetric nuclear matter — •Corbinian Wellenhofer¹, Jeremy W. Holt², Norbert Kaiser¹, and Wolfram Weise^1,3 — ¹Physik Department, Technische Universität München — ²Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle — ³ECT*, Villa Tambosi, Trento

Knowledge of the thermodynamic properties of the nuclear symmetry energy is essential for the study of heavy-ion collisions and a multitude of astrophysical phenomena. In this work, we investigate the density and temperature dependence of the symmetry energy using many-body perturbation theory with microscopic chiral nuclear forces. The calculational methods and nuclear force models are benchmarked against empirical constraints for isospin-symmetric nuclear matter and the virial expansion of low-density neutron matter. It is found that whereas the symmetry free energy and entropy both increase uniformly with temperature, the symmetry energy exhibits almost universal behavior.

Moreover, we show results for the equation of state of isospin-asymmetric nuclear matter, obtained from the parabolic approximation. The different thermodynamic instabilities at subsaturation densities are examined, and we construct the equation of state corresponding to an equilibrium liquid-gas phase transition by means of the generalized Maxwell construction for two-component fluids.

This work is supported in part by DFG and NSFC (CRC 110).