Recent Advances in Microscopic Approaches to Nuclear Matter and Symmetry Energy

Nuclear matter is a convenient theoretical laboratory to test many-body theories. When neutron and proton densities are different, the isospin dependence of the nuclear force gives rise to the symmetry energy term in the equation of state. This quantity is a crucial mechanism in the formation of the neutron skin in nuclei, as well as in other systems and phenomena involved in the dynamics of neutrons and protons in neutron-rich systems, such as isospin-asymmetric heavy-ion collisions. In this article, we will review phenomenological facts about the symmetry energy and recent experimental efforts to constrain its density dependence and related quantities. We will then review our microscopic approach to the equation of state of symmetric and asymmetric nuclear matter and present a corresponding set of predictions. Our calculations utilize the Dirac–Brueckner–Hartree–Fock method and realistic meson-theoretic nucleon-nucleon potentials. Chiral perturbation theory is an alternative approach, based on a well-defined scheme, which allows one to develop nuclear forces at each order of the chiral expansion. We will present and discuss predictions based on chiral perturbation theory, where we employ consistent two- and three-body chiral interactions. Throughout the article, one of the focal points is the importance of pursuing ab initio methods towards a deeper understanding of the many-body system