Abstract
The chemical composition and thermodynamic properties of strongly interacting matter are strongly affected by cluster correlations at subsaturation densities. A generalized relativistic density functional approach, which includes clusters as explicit degrees of freedom with medium dependent properties, is able to describe the formation and dissolution of clusters. Adapting the density functional for the equation of state to nuclear structure calculations, the occurence of α -particle clusters on the surface of heavy nuclei is predicted, which reduces the neutron skin thickness of neutron-rich heavy nuclei and affects the correlation between the neutron skin thicknes and the density dependence of the symmetry energy.
Highlights
Correlations are an essential feature in strongly interacting many-body systems whose properties are encoded in the equation of state (EoS)
One has to distinguish between nuclear matter, where only strongly interacting particles are considered but not the electromagnetic interaction, and stellar matter with both hadrons
In order to incorporate the cluster formation and dissolution in an efficient way in a theoretical model, a generalized relativistic density functional approach [3] was developed by extending well-known relativistic mean-field models with density dependent meson-nucleon couplings [4] using a thermodynamic consistent grand canonical formulation
Summary
Correlations are an essential feature in strongly interacting many-body systems whose properties are encoded in the equation of state (EoS). The study of heavy-ion collisions in laboratory experiments or of the surface of heavy nuclei can help to deduce information on the EoS of dilute matter with densities smaller than nuclear saturation density nsat ≈ 0.15 fm−3. Such conditions are found in astrophysical objects such as core-collapse supernovae or the crust of neutron stars. EPJ Web of Conferences and leptons as constituents and the additional condition of charge neutrality The former system shows a ‘non-congruent’ liquid-gas phase transition at not too high temperatures T in isospin asymmetric matter with baryon number densities nb below nsat [1, 2]. The latter system exhibits the formation of ’pasta’ structures and the gas-solid phase transition to a crystal lattice of ions immersed in a sea of electrons
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