Ground-state properties of light kaonic nuclei signaling symmetry energy at high densities

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that properties of light kaonic nuclei, especially the neutron skin thickness and specific energy states, can serve as sensitive probes for the symmetry energy at high nuclear densities, offering new ways to constrain this fundamental nuclear property.

Contribution

It introduces a novel correlation between kaonic nuclei properties and high-density symmetry energy, highlighting the potential of kaonic nuclei as probes for nuclear matter at supranormal densities.

Findings

High-density core forms in kaonic oxygen nuclei due to antikaon-nucleon attraction.

The $1S_{1/2}$ state energy in kaonic nuclei directly probes symmetry energy variation.

Neutron skin thickness in kaonic nuclei is highly sensitive to the symmetry energy slope.

Abstract

A sensitive correlation between the ground-state properties of light kaonic nuclei and the symmetry energy at high densities is constructed under the framework of relativistic mean-field theory. Taking oxygen isotopes as an example, we see that a high-density core is produced in kaonic oxygen nuclei, due to the strongly attractive antikaon-nucleon interaction. It is found that the $1S_{1/2}$ state energy in the high-density core of kaonic nuclei can directly probe the variation of the symmetry energy at supranormal nuclear density, and a sensitive correlation between the neutron skin thickness and the symmetry energy at supranormal density is established directly. Meanwhile, the sensitivity of the neutron skin thickness to the low-density slope of the symmetry energy is greatly increased in the corresponding kaonic nuclei. These sensitive relationships are established upon the fact that the isovector potential in the central region of kaonic nuclei becomes very sensitive to the variation of the symmetry energy. These findings might provide another perspective to constrain high-density symmetry energy, and await experimental verification in the future.