Constraining the Skyrme effective interactions and the neutron skin thickness of nuclei usi.pdf

a r X i v : n u c l - t h / 0 6 1 0 0 5 7 v 1 1 3 O c t 2 0 0 6 February 9, 2008 0:46 WSPC/INSTRUCTION FILE nucl˙lwchen International Journal of Modern Physics E c? World Scientific Publishing Company CONSTRAINING THE SKYRME EFFECTIVE INTERACTIONS AND THE NEUTRON SKIN THICKNESS OF NUCLEI USING ISOSPIN DIFFUSION DATA FROM HEAVY ION COLLISIONS LIE-WEN CHEN Institute of Theoretical Physics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China lwchen@sjtu.edu.cn CHE MING KO Cyclotron Institute and Physics Department, Texas AM University, College Station, Texas 77843-3366, USA ko@comp.tamu.edu BAO-AN LI Department of Physics, Texas AM University-Commerce, Commerce, Texas 75429, and Department of Chemistry and Physics, P.O. Box 419, Arkansas State University, State University, Arkansas 72467-0419, USA Bao-An Li@TAMU-Commerce.edu Received (received date) Revised (revised date) Recent analysis of the isospin diffusion data from heavy-ion collisions based on an isospin- and momentum-dependent transport model with in-medium nucleon-nucleon cross sec- tions has led to the extraction of a value of L = 88±25 MeV for the slope of the nuclear symmetry energy at saturation density. This imposes stringent constraints on both the parameters in the Skyrme effective interactions and the neutron skin thickness of heavy nuclei. Among the 21 sets of Skyrme interactions commonly used in nuclear structure studies, the 4 sets SIV, SV, Gσ , and Rσ are found to give L values that are consistent with the extracted one. Further study on the correlations between the thickness of the neutron skin in finite nuclei and the nuclear matter symmetry energy in the Skyrme Hartree-Fock approach leads to predicted thickness of the neutron skin of 0.22±0.04 fm for 208Pb, 0.29± 0.04 fm for 132Sn, and 0.22± 0.04 fm for 124Sn. 1. Introduction The study of the equation of state (EOS) of isospin asymmetric nuclear matter, especially the nuclear symmetry energy, is currently an active field of research in n