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Temperature effects on the nuclear symmetry energy and symmetry free energy with an isospin and momentum dependent interaction
Within a self-consistent thermal model using an isospin and momentum
dependent interaction (MDI) constrained by the isospin diffusion data in
heavy-ion collisions, we investigate the temperature dependence of the symmetry
energy and symmetry free energy for hot,
isospin asymmetric nuclear matter. It is shown that the symmetry energy
generally decreases with increasing temperature while the
symmetry free energy exhibits opposite temperature
dependence. The decrement of the symmetry energy with temperature is
essentially due to the decrement of the potential energy part of the symmetry
energy with temperature. The difference between the symmetry energy and
symmetry free energy is found to be quite small around the saturation density
of nuclear matter. While at very low densities, they differ significantly from
each other. In comparison with the experimental data of temperature dependent
symmetry energy extracted from the isotopic scaling analysis of intermediate
mass fragments (IMF's) in heavy-ion collisions, the resulting density and
temperature dependent symmetry energy is then used to
estimate the average freeze-out density of the IMF's.used to estimate the
average freeze-out density of the IMF's.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, 1 figure added to show the temperature dependence
of the potential and kinetic parts of the symmetry energy. Revised version to
appear in PR
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