The interplay of short-range correlations and nuclear symmetry energy in hard photon productions from heavy-ion reactions at Fermi energies

TL;DR

This study uses a transport model to show that short-range correlations dominate hard photon production in heavy-ion collisions at Fermi energies, providing a new way to understand nuclear interactions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that short-range correlations significantly influence hard photon spectra, overshadowing effects of nuclear symmetry energy in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions.

Findings

SRC effects dominate over symmetry energy in photon spectra

Photons mainly originate from high-momentum tails of nucleon distributions

Measurements can help understand SRC independently of symmetry energy effects

Abstract

Within an isospin- and momentum-dependent transport model for nuclear reactions at intermediate energies, we investigate the interplay of the nucleon-nucleon short-range correlations (SRC) and nuclear symmetry energy $E_{sym}(\rho)$ on hard photon spectra in collisions of several Ca isotopes on $^{112}$Sn and $^{124}$Sn targets at a beam energy of 45 MeV/nucleon. It is found that over the whole spectra of hard photons studied, effects of the SRC overwhelm those due to the $E_{sym}(\rho)$. The energetic photons come mostly from the high-momentum tails (HMT) of single-nucleon momentum distributions in the target and projectile. Within the neutron-proton dominance model of SRC based on the consideration that the tensor force acts mostly in the isosinglet and spin-triplet nucleon-nucleon interaction channel, there are equal numbers of neutrons and protons, thus a zero isospin-asymmetry in the HMTs. Therefore, experimental measurements of the energetic photons from heavy-ion collisions at Fermi energies have the great potential to help us better understand the nature of SRC without any appreciable influence by the uncertain $E_{sym}(\rho)$. These measurements will be complementary to but also have some advantages over the ongoing and planned experiments using hadronic messengers from reactions induced by high-energy electrons or protons. Since the underlying physics of SRC and $E_{sym}(\rho)$ are closely correlated, a better understanding of the SRC will in turn help constrain the nuclear symmetry energy more precisely in a broad density range.