The interplay of short-range correlations and nuclear symmetry energy in hard photon productions from heavy-ion reactions at Fermi energies

Abstract

Within an isospin- and momentum-dependent transport model for nuclear reactions at intermediate energies, we investigate the interplay of the nucleon-nucleon short-range correlations (SRC) and nuclear symmetry energy $E_{sym}(\rho )$ on hard photon spectra in collisions of several Ca isotopes on ${}^{112}$Sn and ${}^{124}$Sn targets at a beam energy of 45 MeV/nucleon. It is found that over the whole spectra of hard photons studied, effects of the SRC overwhelm those due to the $E_{sym}(\rho )$. The energetic photons come mostly from the high-momentum tails (HMT) of single-nucleon momentum distributions in the target and projectile. Within the neutron-proton dominance model of SRC based on the consideration that the tensor force acts mostly in the isosinglet and spin-triplet nucleon-nucleon interaction channel, there are equal numbers of neutrons and protons, thus a zero isospin-asymmetry in the HMTs. Therefore, experimental measurements of the energetic photons from heavy-ion collisions at Fermi energies have the great potential to help us better understand the nature of SRC without any appreciable influence by the uncertain $E_{sym}(\rho )$. These measurements will be complementary to but also have some advantages over the ongoing and planned experiments using hadronic messengers from reactions induced by high-energy electrons or protons. Since the underlying physics of SRC and $E_{sym}(\rho )$ are closely correlated, a better understanding of the SRC will in turn help constrain the nuclear symmetry energy more precisely in a broad density range.

Version appeared in PRC

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Cited by in corpus (14)

• Dense Nuclear Matter Equation of State from Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Imprints of high-momentum nucleons in nuclei on hard photons from heavy-ion collisions around the Fermi Energy
• Symmetry energy extracted from the S$\pi$RIT pion data in Sn+Sn systems
• Nucleon momentum distribution of ${}^{56}\text{Fe}$ from the axially deformed relativistic mean-field model with nucleon--nucleon correlations
• Effects of neutron-skin thickness on direct hard photon emission from reactions induced by the neutron-rich projectile ${}^{50}$Ca
• Investigating Effects of Relativistic Kinematics, Dimensionality, Interactions, and Short-Range Correlations on the Ratio of Quartic over Quadratic Nuclear Symmetry Energies
• Direct photon emission and influence of dynamical wave packets in an extended quantum molecular dynamics model
• Proton-proton momentum correlation function as a probe of the high momentum tail of the nucleon momentum distribution
• Nucleon momentum gap in asymmetric nuclear matter
• Nucleon Short-Range Correlations and High-Momentum Dynamics: Implications on the Equation of State of Dense Matter
• Probing in-medium nucleon-nucleon inelastic scattering cross section by using energetic n/p ratio
• Azimuthal anisotropy and multiplicities of hard photons and free nucleons in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions
• Effects of high-momentum tail of nucleon momentum distribution on initiation of cluster production in heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies
• Neutron Star Equation of State with Nucleon Short-Range Correlations: A Concise Review and Open Issues