Experimental determination of the symmetry energy of a low density nuclear gas

2006/02/28 by S. Kowalski, J. B. Natowitz, S. Shlomo +23 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomical and nuclear sciences #Atomic and Molecular Physics #Nuclear physics research studies #nucl-ex

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevc.75.014601

published as Phys.Rev.C75:014601,2007 · 9 pages, 7 figures. This is the version taking into account referee comments

arxiv created 2006/11/15 · openalex publication_date 2007/01/03 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

Experimental analyses of moderate-temperature nuclear gases produced in the violent collisions of 35 MeV/nucleon ⁶⁴Zn projectiles with ⁹²Mo and ¹⁹⁷Au target nuclei reveal a large degree of \ensuremathα particle clustering at low densities. For these gases, temperature- and density-dependent symmetry energy coefficients have been derived from isoscaling analyses of the yields of nuclei with A\ensuremath\leqslant4. At densities of 0.01 to 0.05 times the ground-state density of symmetric nuclear matter, the temperature- and density-dependent symmetry energies range from 9.03 to 13.6 MeV. This is much larger than those obtained in mean-field calculations and reflects the clusterization of low-density nuclear matter. The results are in quite reasonable agreement with calculated values obtained with a recently proposed virial equation of state calculation.

Citations

• Determination of the Stiffness of the Nuclear Symmetry Energy from Isospin Diffusion
• Heavy-residue isoscaling as a probe of the process of N/Z equilibration
• The α-particle in nuclear matter

Cited by

• Incompressibility of neutron-rich matter
• Isobaric yield ratios in heavy-ion reactions, and symmetry energy of neutron-rich nuclei at intermediate energies