Universal correlations in the nuclear symmetry energy, slope parameter, and curvature

TL;DR

This paper derives universal correlations among key nuclear matter properties—symmetry energy, slope, and curvature—using Fermi liquid theory, proposing a reliable global parametrization validated against chiral effective field theory results.

Contribution

It introduces a universal correlation framework for symmetry energy parameters and a new global parametrization that outperforms traditional Taylor expansions at low densities.

Findings

Correlations among J, L, and K_sym are largely independent of nuclear force details.

The proposed global parametrization is more accurate at low densities.

Validation against chiral effective field theory confirms the robustness of the correlations.

Abstract

From general Fermi liquid theory arguments, we derive correlations among the symmetry energy (J), its slope parameter (L), and curvature (K_sym) at nuclear matter saturation density. We argue that certain properties of these correlations do not depend on details of the nuclear forces used in the calculation. We derive as well a global parametrization of the density dependence of the symmetry energy that we show is more reliable, especially at low densities, than the usual Taylor series expansion around saturation density. We then benchmark these predictions against explicit results from chiral effective field theory.