The nucleus-nucleus interaction between boosted nuclei

TL;DR

This paper investigates how relativistic effects influence nucleus-nucleus interaction potentials at high energies, revealing that these effects significantly alter the potential barriers and slopes at energies above 100 MeV/nucleon.

Contribution

It provides a systematic analysis of relativistic effects on nuclear interaction potentials using relativistic mean field theory, highlighting their importance at high bombarding energies.

Findings

Potential barriers are sensitive to bombarding energy.

Relativistic effects become significant above 100 MeV/nucleon.

At high energies, the potential slope decreases with impact parameter.

Abstract

The nucleus-nucleus interaction potential has been studied within the relativistic mean field theory. The systematics of the relativistic effects have been investigated by analyzing the relation between the potential and the bombarding energy as a function of the impact parameter. It is shown that the potential barriers are noticeably sensitive to the bombarding energy for a given impact parameter. At large bombarding energies the slope at the potential edge decreases with the impact parameter. Comparisons with a non-relativistic treatment shows that relativistic effects cannot be ignored at bombarding energies around and larger than 100 MeV/nucleon.