Origins and Impacts of High-Density Symmetry Energy

What is nuclear symmetry energy? Why is it important? What do we know about it? Why is it so uncertain especially at high densities? Can the total symmetry energy or its kinetic part be negative? What are the effects of three-body and/or tensor force on symmetry energy? How can we probe the density dependence of nuclear symmetry energy with terrestrial nuclear experiments? What observables of heavy-ion reactions are sensitive to the high-density behavior of nuclear symmetry energy? How does the symmetry energy affect properties of neutron stars, gravitational waves and our understanding about the nature of strong-field gravity? In this lecture, we try to answer these questions as best as we can based on some of our recent work and/or understanding of research done by others. This note summarizes the main points of the lecture.Comment: Invited lecture given at the Carpathian Summer School of Physics 2016, Exotic Nuclei and Nuclear Astrophysics (VI), Sinaia, Romania, June 26 to July 9, 201

High Density Behaviour of Nuclear Symmetry Energy and High Energy Heavy-Ion Collisions

High energy heavy-ion collisions are proposed as a novel means to obtain information about the high density ({\rm HD}) behaviour of nuclear symmetry energy. Within an isospin-dependent hadronic transport model using phenomenological equations of state ({\rm EOS}) for dense neutron-rich matter, it is shown that the isospin asymmetry of the HD nuclear matter formed in high energy heavy-ion collisions is determined mainly by the HD behaviour of nuclear symmetry energy. Experimental signatures in several sensitive probes, i.e., $\pi^-$ to $\pi^+$ ratio, transverse collective flow and its excitation function as well as neutron-proton differential flow, are investigated. A precursor of the possible isospin separation instability in dense neutron-rich matter is predicted to appear as the local minima in the excitation functions of the transverse flow parameter for both neutrons and protons above the pion production threshold. Because of its {\it qualitative} nature unlike other {\it quantitative} observables, this precursor can be used as a unique signature of the isospin dependence of the nuclear {\rm EOS}. Measurements of these observables will provide the first terrestrial data to constrain stringently the HD behaviour of nuclear symmetry energy and thus also the {\rm EOS} of dense neutron-rich matter. Implications of our findings to neutron star studies are also discussed.Comment: 25 pages + 16 figures, Nucl. Phys. A (2002) in pres