Symmetry Energy in Nuclear Surface

Interplay between the dependence of symmetry energy on density and the variation of nucleonic densities across nuclear surface is discussed. That interplay gives rise to the mass dependence of the symmetry coefficient in an energy formula. Charge symmetry of the nuclear interactions allows to introduce isoscalar and isovector densities that are approximately independent of the magnitude of neutron-proton asymmetry.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, contribution to 15th Nuclear Physics Workshop "Marie & Pierre Curie", Kazimierz, Poland, 2008; minor correction

Symmetry Energy from Systematic of Isobaric Analog States

Excitation energies to isobaric states, that are analogs of ground states, are dominated by contributions from the symmetry energy. This opens up a possibility of investigating the symmetry energy on nucleus-by-nucleus basis. Upon correcting energies of measured nuclear levels for shell and pairing effects, we find that the lowest energies for a given isospin rise in proportion to the square of isospin, allowing for an interpretation of the coefficient of proportionality in terms of a symmetry coefficient for a given nucleus. In the (A,Z) regions where there are enough data, we demonstrate a Z-independence of that coefficient. We further concentrate on the A-dependence of the coefficient, in order to learn about the density dependence of symmetry energy in uniform matter, given the changes of the density in the surface region. In parallel to the analysis of data, we carry out an analysis of the coefficient for nuclei calculated within the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock (SHF) approach, with known symmetry energy for uniform matter. While the data from isobaric analog states suggest a simple interpretation for the A-dependent symmetry coefficient, in terms of the surface and volume symmetry coefficients, the SHF results point to a more complicated situation within the isovector sector than in the isoscalar, with much stronger curvature effects in the first. We exploit the SHF results in estimating the curvature contributions to the symmetry coefficient. That assessment is hampered by instabilities of common Skyrme parameterizations of nuclear interactions.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; talk given at IX Latin American Symposium on Nuclear Physics and Applications, July 18-22, 2011, Quito, Ecuado

In-medium NN cross sections determined from stopping and collective flow in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions

In-medium nucleon-nucleon scattering cross sections are explored by comparing results of quantum molecular dynamics simulations to data on stopping and on elliptic and directed flow in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions. The comparison points to in-medium cross sections which are suppressed at low energies but not at higher energies. Positive correlations are found between the degree of stopping and the magnitudes of elliptic and directed flows.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, to be published on PR

Source Function from Two-Particle Correlation Through Deblurring

In heavy-ion collisions, low relative-velocity two-particle correlations have been a tool for assessing space-time characteristics of particle emission. Those characteristics may be cast in the form of a relative emission source related to the correlation function through the Koonin-Pratt (KP) convolution formula that involves the relative wave-function for the particles in its kernel. In the literature, the source has been most commonly sought by parametrizing it in a Gaussian form and fitting to the correlation function. At times the source was more broadly imaged from the function, still employing a fitting. Here, we propose the use of the Richardson-Lucy (RL) optical deblurring algorithm for deducing the source from a correlation function. The RL algorithm originally follows from probabilistic Bayesian considerations and relies on the intensity distributions for the optical object and its image, as well as the convolution kernel, being positive definite, which is the case for the corresponding quantities of interest within the KP formula

Interaction matrix element fluctuations in quantum dots

In the Coulomb blockade regime of a ballistic quantum dot, the distribution of conductance peak spacings is well known to be incorrectly predicted by a single-particle picture; instead, matrix element fluctuations of the residual electronic interaction need to be taken into account. In the normalized random-wave model, valid in the semiclassical limit where the number of electrons in the dot becomes large, we obtain analytic expressions for the fluctuations of two-body and one-body matrix elements. However, these fluctuations may be too small to explain low-temperature experimental data. We have examined matrix element fluctuations in realistic chaotic geometries, and shown that at energies of experimental interest these fluctuations generically exceed by a factor of about 3-4 the predictions of the random wave model. Even larger fluctuations occur in geometries with a mixed chaotic-regular phase space. These results may allow for much better agreement between the Hartree-Fock picture and experiment. Among other findings, we show that the distribution of interaction matrix elements is strongly non-Gaussian in the parameter range of experimental interest, even in the random wave model. We also find that the enhanced fluctuations in realistic geometries cannot be computed using a leading-order semiclassical approach, but may be understood in terms of short-time dynamics.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures; submitted for conference proceedings of Workshop on Nuclei and Mesoscopic Physics (WNMP07), October 20-22, 2007, East Lansing, Michigan (Pawel Danielewicz, Editor

Analyzing Correlation Functions with Tesseral and Cartesian Spherical Harmonics

The dependence of inter-particle correlations on the orientation of particle relative-momentum can yield unique information on the space-time features of emission in reactions with multiparticle final states. In the present paper, the benefits of a representation and analysis of the three-dimensional correlation information in terms of surface spherical harmonics is presented. The harmonics include the standard complex tesseral harmonics and the real cartesian harmonics. Mathematical properties of the lesser-known cartesian harmonics are illuminated. The physical content of different angular harmonic components in a correlation is described. The resolving power of different final-state effects with regarding to determining angular features of emission regions is investigated. The considered final-state effects include identity interference and strong and Coulomb interactions. The correlation analysis in terms of spherical harmonics is illustrated with the cases of gaussian and blast-wave sources for proton-charged meson and baryon-baryon pairs.Comment: 32 pages 10 figure