Spinodal instability growth in new stochastic approaches

Are spinodal instabilities the leading mechanism in the fragmentation of a fermionic system? Numerous experimental indications suggest such a scenario and stimulated much effort in giving a suitable description, without being finalised in a dedicated transport model. On the one hand, the bulk character of spinodal behaviour requires an accurate treatment of the one-body dynamics, in presence of mechanical instabilities. On the other hand, pure mean-field implementations do not apply to situations where instabilities, bifurcations and chaos are present. The evolution of instabilities should be treated in a large-amplitude framework requiring fluctuations of Langevin type. We present new stochastic approaches constructed by requiring a thorough description of the mean-field response in presence of instabilities. Their particular relevance is an improved description of the spinodal fragmentation mechanism at the threshold, where the instability growth is frustrated by the mean-field resilience.Comment: Conf. proc. IWM2014-EC, Catania, 6-9 May 201

Impact of Reaction Cross Section on the Unified Description of Fusion Excitation Function

International audienceA systematics of over 300 complete and incomplete fusion cross section data points covering energies beyond the barrier for fusion is presented. Owing to a usual reduction of the fusion cross sections by the total reaction cross sections and an original scaling of energy, a fusion excitation function common to all the data points is established. A universal description of the fusion exci-tation function relying on basic nuclear concepts is proposed and its dependence on the reaction cross section used for the cross section normalization is discussed. The pioneering empirical model proposed by Bass in 1974 to describe the complete fusion cross sections is rather successful for the incomplete fusion too and provides cross section predictions in satisfactory agreement with the observed universality of the fusion excitation function. The sophisticated microscopic transport DYWAN model not only reproduces the data but also predicts that fusion reaction mechanism disappears due to weakened nuclear stopping power around the Fermi energy

Stopping power as a signature of dissipative processes in heavy-ion collisions

In heavy-ions collisions different observables have been studied in order to get an insight about dissipative processes taking place in the excited nuclear system. Among them, we can focus on the ratio between the transverse and longitudinal kinetic energy components, or stopping power RE. A substancial reduction of this quantity has been recently evidenced by the INDRA collaboration at incident energies between 32 and 100 A MeV, for various symmetric systems. In this work, the impact of σnn on the stoping power RE is studied in the framework of the microscopic DYWAN model. Calculations have been performed in Xe+Sn central collisions at incident energies between 45 and 100 A MeV, where the theoretical values are shown to be more sensitive to σnn. They are compared with experimental data and with the results of the semiclassical Landau-Vlasov model

Fusion excitation function revisited

We report on a comprehensive systematics of fusion-evaporation and/or fusion-fission cross sections for a very large variety of systems over an energy range 4-155 A.MeV. Scaled by the reaction cross sections, fusion cross sections do not show a universal behavior valid for all systems although a high degree of correlation is present when data are ordered by the system mass asymmetry.For the rather light and close to mass-symmetric systems the main characteristics of the complete and incomplete fusion excitation functions can be precisely determined. Despite an evident lack of data above 15A.MeV for all heavy systems the available data suggests that geometrical effects could explain the persistence of incomplete fusion at incident energies as high as 155A.MeV.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, contribution to the NN2012 Proceeding

Nuclear Flow Excitation Function

We consider the dependence of collective flow on the nuclear surface thickness in a Boltzmann--Uehling--Uhlenbeck transport model of heavy ion collisions. Well defined surfaces are introduced by giving test particles a Gaussian density profile of constant width. Zeros of the flow excitation function are as much influenced by the surface thickness as the nuclear equation of state, and the dependence of this effect is understood in terms of a simple potential scattering model. Realistic calculations must also take into account medium effects for the nucleon--nucleon cross section, and impact parameter averaging. We find that balance energy scales with the mass number as $A^{-y}$, where $y$ has a numerical value between 0.35 and 0.5, depending on the assumptions about the in-medium nucleon-nucleon cross section.Comment: 11 pages (LaTeX), 7 figures (not included), MSUCL-884, WSU-NP-93-

Isospin dependence of collective flow in heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies

Within the framework of an isospin-dependent Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (BUU) model using initial proton and neutron densities calculated from the nonlinear relativistic mean-field (RMF) theory, we compare the strength of transverse collective flow in reactions $^{48}Ca+^{58}Fe$ and $^{48}Cr+^{58}Ni$, which have the same mass number but different neutron/proton ratios. The neutron-rich system ($^{48}Ca+^{58}Fe$) is found to show significantly stronger negative deflection and consequently has a higher balance energy, especially in peripheral collisions. NOTE ADDED IN PROOF: The new phenomenon predicted in this work has just been confirmed by an experiment done by G.D. Westfall et al. using the NSCL/MSU radioactive beam facility and a spartan soccer. A paper by R. Pak et al. is submitted to PRL to report the experimental result.Comment: Latex file, 9 pages, 4 figures availabe upon request; Phys. Rev. Lett. (June 3, 1996) in pres

Neutron-Proton Differential Flow as a Probe of Isospin-Dependence of Nuclear Equation of State

The neutron-proton differential flow is shown to be a very useful probe of the isospin-dependence of the nuclear equation of state (EOS). This novel approach utilizes constructively both the isospin fractionation and the nuclear collective flow as well as their sensitivities to the isospin-dependence of the nuclear EOS. It also avoids effectively uncertainties associated with other dynamical ingredients of heavy-ion reactions at intermediate energies.Comment: 10 pages + 3 figures. Phys. Rev. Lett. (2000) in pres