English

Symmetry energy at high densities from neutron/proton flow excitation functions

Nuclear Experiment 2021-05-20 v1

Abstract

Determination of the high density behavior of the symmetry energy through the simultaneous measurement of elliptic flow excitation functions of neutrons, protons and light clusters is proposed. The elliptic flow developed in relativistic heavy ion collisions has been proven theoretically and experimentally to have a unique sensitivity and robustness in probing the symmetry energy up to around 2ρo2 \rho_{o}. The knowledge of the density dependence of the symmetry energy in a broad range of densities will provide a missing link for astrophysical predictions of the neutron star mass--radius relation. In particular, the data colud provide tighter constraints on the slope parameter L and entirely new limits on KsymK_{sym}, the currently poorly constrained symmetry energy curvature parameter.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2105.09233,
  title  = {Symmetry energy at high densities from neutron/proton flow excitation functions},
  author = {P. Russotto and A. Le Fèvre and J. Łukasik and K. Boretzky and M. D. Cozma and E. De Filippo and I. Gašparić and Y. Leifels and I. Lihtar and S. Pirrone and G. Politi and W. Trautmann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.09233},
  year   = {2021}
}