Low-density homogeneous symmetric nuclear matter: disclosing dinucleons in coexisting phases

TL;DR

This study investigates how in-medium dinucleon bound states influence the properties of symmetric nuclear matter at zero temperature, revealing coexistence of solutions and potential superfluidity effects within specific density ranges.

Contribution

It explicitly accounts for dinucleon bound states in Brueckner-Hartree-Fock calculations without effective mass approximation, identifying coexisting solutions and their density domains.

Findings

Two distinct self-consistent solutions coexist in certain density ranges.

Effective masses can reach up to three times the nucleon mass.

Emergence of superfluidity linked to BCS pairing gaps.

Abstract

The effect of in-medium dinucleon bound states on self-consistent single-particle fields in Brueckner, Bethe and Goldstone theory is investigated in symmetric nuclear matter at zero temperature. To this end, dinucleon bound state occurences in the $^1S_0$ and ${}^3SD_1$ channels are explicitly accounted for -within the continuous choice for the auxiliary fields- while imposing self-consistency in Brueckner-Hartree-Fock approximation calculations. Searches are carried out at Fermi momenta in the range $0<k_F\leq1.75$~fm$^{-1}$, using the Argonne $v_{18}$ bare nucleon-nucleon potential without resorting to the effective mass approximation. As a result, two distinct solutions meeting the self-consistency requirement are found with overlapping domains in the interval $0.130\;\textrm{fm}^{-1} \leq k_F \leq 0.285\;\textrm{fm}^{-1}$, corresponding to mass densities between $10^{11.4}$ and $10^{12.4}$ g cm$^{-3}$. Effective masses as high as three times the nucleon mass are found in the coexistence domain. The emergence of superfluidity in relationship with BCS pairing gap solutions is discussed.