Nucleon properties inside compressed nuclear matter

TL;DR

This paper investigates how nucleon mass and size change in compressed nuclear matter using an extended RMF model, highlighting the importance of energy transfer from mean fields to quarks for accurate nuclear properties.

Contribution

It introduces an extended RMF model that incorporates energy transfer to quarks, improving the description of nuclear matter properties under compression.

Findings

Nucleon mass and radius decrease with increased density.

Energy transfer affects the Equation of State and nuclear matter properties.

Model achieves good agreement with empirical nuclear compressibility and symmetry energy.

Abstract

In this work we show the modifications of nucleon mass and nucleon radius with the help of the extended Relativistic Mean Field (RMF) model. We argue that even small departures above nuclear equilibrium density with constant nucleon mass require an energy transfer from the repulsive mean field to the quarks forming nucleon massive bags in Nuclear Matter (NM), together with the decrease in the nucleon volume. The transfer, which is proportional to pressure and absent in a standard RMF approach, provides good values for nuclear compressibility, symmetry energy and its slope. Different courses of the Equation of State (EOS), which depend on the energy transfer, are considered.