Open questions: Thermalization and flow, kinetic or potential driven?

Abstract

The fact that neutron drifts seem not to follow the expectations based on energetically dominated statistical descriptions of the deep inelastic reactions is welcomed as keeping open the hope that specific mechanistic aspects of the nuclear flow and thermalization processes might yet emerge from beneath the cover of these reactions' statistical complexity. A one-dimensional Schrödinger DOUBLE WELL model is analyzed to show that its Schrodinger dynamical flow does not conform to the common statistical assumption of total energy dominance. Rather, nucleonic kinetic energy emerges as a stronger determinant of the early flow than potential energy. Since these “kinetic pressures” are very sensitive to the radii of the nucleonic potential wells, their study promises to illuminate the question of differences between the neutron and proton radii. Also, for kinetic pressure dominated exchanges, one-dimensional loci of equilibrium points in the projectile-like (Z,N) plane replace the isolated stationary points of the energy surface. One thus arrives at a two-stage equilibration process, in which the early rapid kinetic pressure driven drift toward a kinetic pressure equilibrium is followed by a slower potential, driven drift along the locus of kinetic equilibria towards the energy equilibrium point. Were the neutron and proton loci of equilibria to separate, an “equilibrium channel” could arise, which would tend to guide the N-Z exchanges in a direction which might even be opposite to the preference of the overall energy.