Heavy-ion Collisions: Direct and indirect probes of the density and temperature dependence of Esym

Heavy-ion collisions provide a versatile terrestrial probe of the nuclear equation of state through the formation of nuclear matter at a wide variety of temperatures, densities, and pressures. Direct and indirect approaches for constraining the density dependence of the symmetry energy using heavy-ion collisions have been developed. The direct approach relies on scaling methods which attempt to connect isotopic fragment distributions to the symmetry energy. Using the indirect approach constraints on the equation of state are extracted from comparison of experimental results and theoretical transport calculations which utilize effective nucleon-nucleon interactions. Besides exploring the density dependence of the equation of state, heavy-ion collisions are simultaneously probing different temperature gradients of nuclear matter allowing for the temperature dependence of the symmetry energy to be examined. The current progress and open questions related to constraining the density and temperature dependence of the symmetry energy with heavy-ion collisions are discussed in the review.Comment: Review to appear in the upcoming EPJA special volume on nuclear symmetry energ

Studies of reaction dynamics in the Fermi energy domain

An overview of recent results on reaction dynamics in the energy region 20 - 50 A.MeV is given. The results of the study of projectile multifragmentation using the detector array FAUST are presented. Reaction mechanism is determined and thermodynamical properties of the hot quasiprojectile are investigated. Preliminary results on fragment isospin asymmetry obtained using the 4$\pi$ detector array NIMROD are given. Procedure for selecting centrality in two-dimensional multiplicity histograms is described. Possibility to extract thermodynamical temperature from systematics of isotope ratios is investigated. Reaction mechanism leading to production of hot sources is discussed. Furthermore, the possibilities for production of rare isotopes are discussed and recent experimental results obtained using recoil separator MARS are presented.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures, contribution to proceedings of the conference DANF'2001, Casta-Papiernicka, Slovakia published by World Scientifi

Symmetry Energy in the Equation of State of Asymmetric Nuclear Matte

The symmetry energy is an important quantity in the equation of state of isospin asymmetric nuclear matter. This currently unknown quantity is key to understanding the structure of systems as diverse as the neutron-rich nuclei and neutron stars. At TAMU, we have carried out studies, aimed at understanding the symmetry energy, in a variety of reactions such as, the multifragmentation of $^{40}$Ar, $^{40}$Ca + $^{58}$Fe, $^{58}$Ni and $^{58}$Ni, $^{58}$Fe + $^{58}$Ni, $^{58}$Fe reactions at 25 - 53 AMeV, and deep-inelastic reactions of $^{86}$Kr + $^{124,112}$Sn, $^{64,58}$Ni (25 AMeV), $^{64}$Ni + $^{64,58}$Ni, $^{112,124}$Sn, $^{232}$Th, $^{208}$Pb (25 AMeV) and $^{136}$Xe + $^{64,58}$Ni, $^{112,124}$Sn, $^{232}$Th, $^{197}$Au (20 AMeV). Here we present an overview of some of the results obtained from these studies. The results are analyzed within the framework of statistical and dynamical models, and have important implications for future experiments using beams of neutron-rich nuclei.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, talk presented at VI Latin American Symposium on Nuclear Physics and Application

Isoscaling in Peripheral Nuclear Collisions around the Fermi Energy and a Signal of Chemical Separation from its Excitation Energy Dependence

The isoscaling is investigated using the fragment yield data from fully reconstructed quasi-projectiles observed in peripheral collisions of 28Si with 124,112Sn at projectile energies 30 and 50 MeV/nucleon. The excitation energy dependence of the isoscaling parameter beta_prime is observed which is independent of beam energy. For a given quasi-projectile produced in reactions with different targets no isoscaling is observed. The isoscaling thus reflects the level of N/Z-equilibration in reactions with different targets represented by the initial quasi-projectile samples. The excitation energy dependence of the isoscaling parameter beta_prime, corrected for the trivial 1/T temperature dependence, does not follow the trend of the homogeneous system above 4 MeV/nucleon thus possibly signaling the onset of separation into isospin asymmetric dilute and isospin symmetric dense phase.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, RevTeX, to appear in Physical Review

Effective nucleon mass and the nuclear caloric curve

Assuming a schematic form of the nucleon effective mass as a function of nuclear excitation energy and mass, we provide a simple explanation for understanding the experimentally observed mass dependence of the nuclear caloric curve. It is observed that the excitation energy at which the caloric curve enters into a plateau region, could be sensitive to the nuclear mass evolution of the effective nucleon mass.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. C. Minor changes mad

Isospin non-equilibrium in heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies

We study the equilibration of isospin degree of freedom in intermediate energy heavy-ion collisions using an isospin-dependent BUU model. It is found that there exists a transition from the isospin equilibration at low energies to non-equilibration at high energies as the beam energy varies across the Fermi energy in central, asymmetric heavy-ion collisions. At beam energies around 55 MeV/nucleon, the composite system in thermal equilibrium but isospin non-equilibrium breaks up into two primary hot residues with N/Z ratios closely related to those of the target and projectile respectively. The decay of these forward-backward moving residues results in the strong isospin asymmetry in space and the dependence of the isotopic composition of fragments on the N/Z ratios of the target and projectile. These features are in good agreement with those found recently in experiments at NSCL/MSU and TAMU, implications of these findings are discussed.Comment: 9 pages, latex, + 3 figures available upon reques

Symmetry energy and the isoscaling properties of the fragments produced in 40^{40}Ar, 40^{40}Ca + 58^{58}Fe, 58^{58}Ni reactions at 25 −- 53 MeV/nucleon

The symmetry energy and the isoscaling properties of the fragments produced in the multifragmentation of $^{40}$Ar, $^{40}$Ca + $^{58}$Fe, $^{58}$Ni reactions at 25 - 53 MeV/nucleon were investigated within the framework of statistical multifragmentation model. The isoscaling parameters $\alpha$, from the primary (hot) and secondary (cold) fragment yield distributions, were studied as a function of excitation energy, isospin (neutron-to-proton asymmetry) and fragment symmetry energy. It is observed that the isoscaling parameter $\alpha$ decreases with increasing excitation energy and decreasing symmetry energy. The parameter $\alpha$ is also observed to increase with increasing difference in the isospin of the fragmenting system. The sequential decay of the primary fragments into secondary fragments, when studied as a function of excitation energy and isospin of the fragmenting system, show very little influence on the isoscaling parameter. The symmetry energy however, has a strong influence on the isospin properties of the hot fragments. The experimentally observed scaling parameters can be explained by symmetry energy that is significantly lower than that for the ground state nuclei near saturation density. The results indicate that the properties of hot nuclei at excitation energies, densities and isospin away from the normal ground state nuclei could be significantly different.Comment: 14 pages, 15 figure

Tracing the evolution of the symmetry energy of hot nuclear fragments from the compound nucleus towards multifragmentation

The evolution of the symmetry energy coefficient of the binding energy of hot fragments with increasing excitation is explored in multifragmentation processes following heavy-ion collisions below the Fermi energy. In this work, high-resolution mass spectrometric data on isotopic distributions of projectile-like fragments from collisions of 25 MeV/nucleon 86Kr and 64Ni beams on heavy neutron-rich targets are systematically compared to calculations involving the Statistical Multifragmentation Model. The study reveals a gradual decrease of the symmetry energy coefficient from 25 MeV at the compound nucleus regime (E*/A < 2 MeV) towards 15 MeV in the bulk multifragmentation regime (E*/A > 4 MeV). The ensuing isotopic distributions of the hot fragments are found to be very wide and extend towards the neutron drip-line. These findings may have important implications to the composition and evolution of hot astrophysical environments, such as core-collapse supernova.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.