Thermodynamics of isospin-asymmetric nuclear matter from chiral effective field theory

TL;DR

This paper investigates the thermodynamics of isospin-asymmetric nuclear matter using chiral effective field theory, focusing on the free energy, symmetry energy, and stability at various densities and temperatures.

Contribution

It introduces a microscopic approach to calculate the nuclear symmetry free energy with chiral potentials, benchmarking models against known nuclear matter properties.

Findings

Calculated the density and temperature dependence of symmetry free energy.

Analyzed the spinodal instability at subnuclear densities.

Benchmarking of nuclear force models against empirical data.

Abstract

The density and temperature dependence of the nuclear symmetry free energy is investigated using microscopic two- and three-body nuclear potentials constructed from chiral effective field theory. The nuclear force models and many-body methods are benchmarked to properties of isospin-symmetric nuclear matter in the vicinity of the saturation density as well as the virial expansion of the neutron matter equation of state at low fugacities. The free energy per particle of isospin-asymmetric nuclear matter is calculated assuming a quadratic dependence of the interaction contributions on the isospin asymmetry. The spinodal instability at subnuclear densities is examined in detail.