The effects of medium on nuclear properties in multifragmentation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the properties of nuclear fragments are altered in a hot, dense environment during multifragmentation, revealing that medium interactions cause fragment stretching and reduced binding energies.

Contribution

It introduces a simple model incorporating medium effects on nuclear fragments, accounting for density and temperature dependence in a multifragmentation scenario.

Findings

Fragments are stretched due to medium interactions.

Binding energies decrease with increasing temperature and density.

Properties of fragments differ from isolated nuclei in hot nuclear matter.

Abstract

In multifragmentation of hot nuclear matter, properties of fragments embedded in a soup of nucleonic gas and other fragments should be modified as compared with isolated nuclei. Such modifications are studied within a simple model where only nucleons and one kind of heavy nuclei are considered. The interaction between different species is described with a momentum-dependent two-body potential whose parameters are fitted to reproduce properties of cold isolated nuclei. The internal energy of heavy fragments is parametrized according to a liquid-drop model with density and temperature dependent parameters. Calculations are carried out for several subnuclear densities and moderate temperatures, for isospin-symmetric and asymmetric systems. We find that the fragments get stretched due to interactions with the medium and their binding energies decrease with increasing temperature and density of nuclear matter.