A new approach for calculating nuclear symmetry energy

TL;DR

This paper introduces a model-independent formula for nuclear symmetry energy using the functional path integral method, linking it to isospin susceptibility and revealing an abrupt change at the chiral phase transition.

Contribution

It presents a novel, model-independent formula for nuclear symmetry energy and connects it to QCD phase transitions, providing new insights into nuclear matter behavior.

Findings

Nuclear symmetry energy is related to isospin susceptibility.

An abrupt change in symmetry energy occurs at the chiral symmetry restoration point.

The change in symmetry energy can be experimentally detected.

Abstract

By using the functional path integral method, we obtain a model-independent formula for nuclear symmetry energy, which explicitly shows the relation between nuclear symmetry energy and isospin susceptibility. The latter one is found to be a probe to the QCD chiral phase transition. We further found that, the nuclear symmetry energy has an abrupt change at the critical nuclear density where the chiral symmetry restores partially, which could be detected from the experiments.