Particle-particle correlation functions as an experimental probe of the nuclear asymmetry energy

Abstract

The shapes of correlation functions are known to give information about the spatial and temporal extent of an emitting source. Since these two properties can be sensitive to the density-dependence of the asymmetry energy, these functions have been constructed using transport models in the past. In this work, correlation functions extracted using Constrained Molecular Dynamics (CoMD) are used to investigate the possibility of experimentally probing the density-dependence of the asymmetry energy using these correlation functions and detectors with high angular resolution.