Probing the sensitivity of the total nucleus-nucleus reaction cross section at intermediate energies to medium effects and isospin asymmetries

TL;DR

This study investigates how medium effects and isospin asymmetries influence the total nucleus-nucleus reaction cross section at intermediate energies, highlighting significant sensitivity to medium effects but minimal impact from isospin asymmetry.

Contribution

It introduces a pipeline for reaction cross section predictions based on microscopic nuclear interactions and explores their sensitivity to medium effects and isospin asymmetries.

Findings

Reaction cross section is highly sensitive to medium effects.

Weak sensitivity of cross section to isospin asymmetry.

Predictions include reactions involving 208-Pb and neutron-rich isotopes.

Abstract

This paper presents reaction cross section predictions. These predictions are the result of a continuous pipeline which originates from a microscopic nuclear interaction. Density parameters and effective nucleon-nucleon cross sections (both involved in the reaction calculations) are by-products of the same equation of state. First, we perform tests of sensitivity to medium effects using reactions involving 208-Pb, a stable but weakly isospin-asymmetric nucleus. We also show predictions for collisions of some neutron-rich isotopes of Calcium and Argon. We observe significant sensitivity of the reaction cross section to medium effects but very weak sensitivity to inclusion of isospin asymmetry in the effective nucleon-nucleon cross sections.