An equation of state (EOS) for uniform asymmetric nuclear matter (ANM) is constructed at zero and finite temperatures by the variational method starting from the nuclear Hamiltonian that is composed of the Argonne v18 and Urbana IX potentials. At zero temperature, the two-body energy is calculated with the Jastrow wave function in the two-body cluster approximation which is supplemented by Mayer's condition and the healing-distance condition so as to reproduce the result by Akmal, Pandharipande and Ravenhall. The energy caused by the three-body force is treated somewhat phenomenologically so that the total energy reproduces the empirical saturation conditions. The masses and radii of neutron stars obtained with the EOS are consistent with recent observational data. At finite temperatures, thermodynamic quantities such as free energy, internal energy, entropy, pressure and chemical potentials are calculated with an extension of the method by Schmidt and Pandharipande. The validity of the frozen-correlation approximation employed in this work is confirmed as compared with the result of the fully minimized calculation. The quadratic proton-fraction-dependence of the energy of ANM is confirmed at zero temperature, whereas the free energy of ANM deviates from the quadratic proton-fraction-dependence markedly at finite temperatures. The obtained EOS of ANM will be an important ingredient of a new nuclear EOS for supernova numerical simulations.
We present a new equation of state for infinite systems (symmetric, asymmetric and neutron matter) based on an extended Skyrme functional constrained by microscopic Brueckner-Bethe-Goldstone results. The resulting equation of state reproduces with very good accuracy the main features of microscopic calculations and it is compatible with recent measurements of two times Solar-mass neutron stars. We provide all necessary analytical expressions to facilitate a quick numerical implementation of quantities of astrophysical interest.
Self-consistent mean field methods based on phenomenological Skyrme effective interactions are known to exhibit spurious spin and spin-isospin instabilities both at zero and finite temperatures when applied to homogeneous nuclear matter at the densities encountered in neutron stars and in supernova cores. The origin of these instabilities is revisited in the framework of the nuclear energy density functional theory and a simple prescription is proposed to remove them. The stability of several Skyrme parametrizations is reexamined.
Low-mass neutron stars are directly associated with the nuclear saturation parameters because their central density is definitely low. We have already found a suitable combination of nuclear saturation parameters for expressing the neutron star mass and gravitational redshift, i.e., $η\equiv (K_0L^2)^{1/3}$ with the incompressibility for symmetric nuclear matter, $K_0$, and the density-dependent nuclear symmetry energy, $L$. In this study, we newly find another suitable combination given by $η_τ\equiv (-K_τL^5)^{1/6}$ with the isospin dependence of incompressibility for asymmetric nuclear matt…
The equation of state (EOS) for hot asymmetric nuclear matter which is constructed with the variational method starting from the Argonne v18 and Urbana IX nuclear forces is applied to spherically symmetric core-collapse supernovae (SNe). We first investigate the EOS of isentropic beta-stable SN matter, and find that the matter with the variational EOS is more neutron-rich than that with the Shen EOS. Using the variational EOS for uniform matter supplemented by the Shen EOS of non-uniform matter at low densities, we perform general-relativistic spherically symmetric simulations of core-collapse…
As an extension of our previous work, the growth of density fluctuations in the spinodal region of charge asymmetric nuclear matter is investigated in the basis of the stochastic mean-field approach in the non-relativistic framework. A complete treatment of density correlation functions are presented by including collective modes and non-collective modes as well.
The liquid-gas phase transition in hot asymmetric nuclear matter is investigated within relativistic mean-field model using the density dependence of nuclear symmetry energy constrained from the measured neutron skin thickness of finite nuclei. We find symmetry energy has a significant influence on several features of liquid-gas phase transition. The boundary and area of the liquid-gas coexistence region, the maximal isospin asymmetry and the critical values of pressure and isospin asymmetry all of which systematically increase with increasing softness in the density dependence of symmetry ene…
The off-shell behavior of the nucleon self-energy in isospin asymmetric nuclear matter is investigated within the framework of relativistic Dirac-Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approach based on projection techniques. The dependence of the Dirac components of the self-energy on momentum as well as energy is evaluated for symmetric as well as asymmetric nuclear matter. Special attention is paid to the various contributions to the momentum dependence of the real and imaginary part of the optical potential. The consequences to the different definitions of the effective nucleon mass and particle spectral …
Three body effects are studied for both asymmetric nuclear matter and pure neutron matter to calculate the nuclear Equation of State . The Brueckner Hartree Fock approximation is used using CD Bonn B and Argonne V18 potentials. A two body density dependent Skyrme potential is added to reproduce the empirical saturation point. Good agreement is obtained in comparison with exact calculation including three body forces.
The density and temperature dependence of the nuclear symmetry free energy is investigated using microscopic two- and three-body nuclear potentials constructed from chiral effective field theory. The nuclear force models and many-body methods are benchmarked to properties of isospin-symmetric nuclear matter in the vicinity of the saturation density as well as the virial expansion of the neutron matter equation of state at low fugacities. The free energy per particle of isospin-asymmetric nuclear matter is calculated assuming a quadratic dependence of the interaction contributions on the isospi…
The thermal properties of asymmetric nuclear matter are investigated in a relativistic mean- field approach. We start from free space NN-interactions and derive in-medium self-energies by Dirac-Brueckner theory. By the DDRH procedure we derive in a self-consistent approach density- dependent meson-baryon vertices. At the mean-field level, we include isoscalar and isovector scalar and vector interactions. The nuclear equation of state is investigated for a large range of total baryon densities up to the neutron star regime, the full range of asymmetries from symmetric nuclear matter to pure neu…
Using an isospin-dependent quantum molecular dynamics (IQMD) model, nuclear stopping is analyzed in asymmetric colliding channels by keeping the total mass fixed. The calculations have been carried by varying the asymmetry of the colliding pairs with different neutron-proton ratios in center of mass energy 250 MeV/nucleon and by switching off the effect of Coulomb interactions. We find sizable effect of asymmetry of colliding pairs on the stopping and therefore on the equilibrium reached in a reaction.
The spinodal instabilities in hot asymmetric nuclear matter and some important critical parameters derived thereof are studied using six different families of relativistic mean-field (RMF) models. The slopes of the symmetry energy coefficient vary over a wide range within each family. The critical densities and proton fractions are more sensitive to the symmetry energy slope parameter at temperatures much below its critical value ($T_c\sim$14-16 MeV). The spread in the critical proton fraction at a given symmetry energy slope parameter is noticeably larger near $T_c$, indicating that the warm …
We present the formalism of linear response theory both at zero and finite temperature in the case of asymmetric nuclear matter excited by an isospin flip probe. The particle-hole interaction is derived from a general Skyrme functional that includes spin-orbit and tensor terms. Response functions are obtained by solving a closed algebraic system of equations. Spin strength functions are analyzed for typical values of density, momentum transfer, asymmetry and temperature.
Within the nuclear density functional theory (DFT) we study the effect of reflection-asymmetric shapes on ground-state binding energies and binding energy differences. To this end, we developed the new DFT solver AxialHFB that uses an approximate second-order gradient to solve the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov equations of superconducting DFT with the quasi-local Skyrme energy density functionals. Illustrative calculations are carried out for even-even isotopes of radium and thorium.
Background: The presence of nuclear ground states with stable reflection-asymmetric shapes is supported by rich experimental evidence. Theoretical surveys of odd-multipolarity deformations predict the existence of pear-shaped isotopes in several fairly localized regions of the nuclear landscape in the vicinity of near-lying single-particle shells with $Δ\ell=Δj=3$. Purpose: We analyze the role of isoscalar, isovector, neutron-proton, neutron-neutron, and proton-proton multipole interaction energies in inducing the onset of reflection-asymmetric ground-state deformations. Methods: The calculati…
We investigate the effects of charge independence and charge symmetry breaking in neutron-rich matter. We consider neutron and proton properties in isospin-asymmetric matter at normal densities as well as the high-density neutron matter equation of state and the bulk properties of neutron stars. We find charge symmetry and charge independence breaking effects to be very small.
The liquid-gas phase transition in hot asymmetric nuclear matter is studied within density-dependent relativistic mean-field models where the density dependence is introduced according to the Brown-Rho scaling and constrained by available data at low densities and empirical properties of nuclear matter. The critical temperature of the liquid-gas phase transition is obtained to be 15.7 MeV in symmetric nuclear matter falling on the lower edge of the small experimental error bars. In hot asymmetric matter, the boundary of the phase-coexistence region is found to be sensitive to the density depen…
We present microscopic calculations of light and medium mass nuclei and the equation of state of symmetric and asymmetric nuclear matter using different nucleon-nucleon forces, including a new Argonne version that has the same spin/isospin structure as local chiral forces at next-to-next-to-leading order (N2LO). The calculations are performed using Auxiliary Field Diffusion Monte Carlo (AFDMC) combined with an improved variational wave function. We show that the AFDMC method can now be used to successfully calculate the energies of very light to medium mass nuclei as well as the energy of isos…
