Empirical information on nuclear matter fourth-order symmetry energy from an extended nuclear mass formula

Abstract

We establish a relation between the equation of state (EOS) of nuclear matter and the fourth-order symmetry energy $a_{\mathrm{sym},4}(A)$ of finite nuclei in a semi-empirical nuclear mass formula by self-consistently considering the bulk, surface and Coulomb contributions to the nuclear mass. Such a relation allows us to extract information on nuclear matter fourth-order symmetry energy $E_{\mathrm{sym},4}({\rho }_0)$ at normal nuclear density ${\rho }_0$ from analyzing nuclear mass data. Based on the recent precise extraction of $a_{\mathrm{sym},4}(A)$ via the double difference of the "experimental" symmetry energy extracted from nuclear masses, for the first time, we estimate a value of $E_{\mathrm{sym},4}({\rho }_0)=20.0\pm 4.6$ MeV. Such a value of $E_{\mathrm{sym},4}({\rho }_0)$ is significantly larger than the predictions from mean-field models and thus suggests the importance of considering the effects of beyond the mean-field approximation in nuclear matter calculations.

7 pages, 1 figure. Presentation improved and discussions added. Accepted version to appear in PLB

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Nucleon Effective Masses in Neutron-Rich Matter
• Nuclear fourth-order symmetry energy and its effects on neutron star properties in the relativistic Hartree-Fock theory
• Nuclear matter fourth-order symmetry energy in non-relativistic mean-field models
• Anomalous quartic term in the expansion of the symmetry energy
• Accurate nuclear symmetry energy at finite temperature within a BHF approach
• Relativistic self-energy decomposition of nuclear symmetry energy and equation of state of neutron matter within QCD sum rules
• Aspects of approximation in modelling of the symmetry energy
• Nucleon Short-Range Correlations and High-Momentum Dynamics: Implications on the Equation of State of Dense Matter
• High-order isospin-dependent surface tension contribution to the fourth-order symmetry energy of finite nuclei