Probing the density dependence of the symmetry energy by nucleon flow

Abstract

In the framework of the isospin-dependent Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck transport model, sensitive regions of some nucleon observables to the nuclear symmetry energy are studied. It is found that the symmetry energy sensitive observable n/p ratio in the ${}^{132}$Sn+${}^{124}$Sn reaction at 0.3 GeV/nucleon in fact just probes the density-dependent symmetry energy below the density of $1.5{\rho }_0$ and effectively probes the density-dependent symmetry energy around or somewhat below the saturation density. Nucleon elliptic flow can probe the symmetry energy from the low-density region to the high-density region when changing the incident beam energies from 0.3 to 0.6 GeV/nucleon in the semi-central ${}^{132}$Sn+${}^{124}$Sn reaction. And nucleon transverse and elliptic flows in the semi-central ${}^{197}$Au+${}^{197}$Au reaction at 0.6 GeV/nucleon are more sensitive to the high-density behavior of the nuclear symmetry energy. One thus concludes that nucleon observables in the heavy reaction system and with higher incident beam energy are more suitable to be used to probe the high-density behavior of the symmetry energy. The present study may help one to get more specific information about the density-dependent symmetry energy from nucleon flow observable in heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies.

5 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Results of the ASY-EOS experiment at GSI: The symmetry energy at suprasaturation density
• Constraining the High-Density Behavior of Nuclear Symmetry Energy with the Tidal Polarizability of Neutron Stars
• Symmetry Energy of Nucleonic Matter With Tensor Correlations
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• The interplay of short-range correlations and nuclear symmetry energy in hard photon productions from heavy-ion reactions at Fermi energies
• Normal or abnormal isospin-fractionation as a qualitative probe of nuclear symmetry energy at supradensities
• Azimuthal asymmetry of direct photons in intermediate energy heavy-ion collisions
• Decomposition of sensitivity of the symmetry energy observables
• Probing the momentum-dependence of the symmetry potential by the free n/p ratio of preequilibrium emission

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Impact of quadrupole deformation on intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions
• High $p_t$ squeezed-out n/p ratio as a probe of $K_{\mathrm{sym}}$ of the symmetry energy
• Determination of the density region of the symmetry energy probed by the ${\pi }^{-}/{\pi }^{+}$ ratio
• In-medium effects of nucleon-nucleon cross sections in heavy-ion collisions