Probing Nuclear Symmetry Energy and its Imprints on Properties of Nuclei, Nuclear Reactions, Neutron Stars and Gravitational Waves

Abstract

Significant progress has been made in recent years in constraining nuclear symmetry energy at and below the saturation density of nuclear matter using data from both terrestrial nuclear experiments and astrophysical observations. However, many interesting questions remain to be studied especially at supra-saturation densities. In this lecture note, after a brief summary of the currently available constraints on nuclear symmetry energy near the saturation density we first discuss the relationship between the symmetry energy and the isopin and momentum dependence of the single-nucleon potential in isospin-asymmetric nuclear medium. We then discuss several open issues regarding effects of the tensor force induced neutron-proton short-range correlation (SRC) on nuclear symmetry energy. Finally, as an example of the impacts of nuclear symmetry energy on properties of neutron stars and gravitational waves, we illustrate effects of the high-density symmetry energy on the tidal polarizability of neutron stars in coalescing binaries.

A lecture given at the International Summer School for Advanced Studies "Dynamics of Open Nuclear Systems", July 9-20, 2012, Predeal, Romania

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• A new equation of state for neutron star matter with nuclei in the crust and hyperons in the core
• Electric Dipole Polarizability in ${}^{208}$Pb as a Probe of the Symmetry Energy and Neutron Matter around ${\rho }_0/3$
• Constraining the density slope of nuclear symmetry energy at subsaturation densities using electric dipole polarizability in ${}^{208}$Pb
• Constraints on the skewness coefficient of symmetric nuclear matter within the nonlinear relativistic mean field model
• Constraining the high-density nuclear symmetry energy with the transverse-momentum dependent elliptic flow
• Extended Skyrme interactions for nuclear matter, finite nuclei and neutron stars
• Bayesian inference of nuclear symmetry energy from measured and imagined neutron skin thickness in ${}^{116,118,120,122,124,130,132}$Sn, ${}^{208}$Pb, and ${}^{48}$Ca
• Probing nuclear symmetry energy at high densities using pion, kaon, eta and photon productions in heavy-ion collisions
• Symmetry energy systematics and its high density behavior
• Relativistic self-energy decomposition of nuclear symmetry energy and equation of state of neutron matter within QCD sum rules
• Proton Mass, Topology Change and Tensor Forces in Compressed Baryonic Matter