# Nuclear matter properties at finite temperatures from effective interactions

## TL;DR

This paper evaluates whether commonly used effective nucleon-nucleon interactions can accurately describe hot dense nuclear matter in heavy-ion collisions, comparing them to ab initio results and assessing their suitability for transport models.

## Contribution

It demonstrates that effective interactions with correct momentum dependence can reliably model hot dense nuclear matter, validated against ab initio calculations.

## Key findings

- The improved isospin- and momentum-dependent interaction matches ab initio results well.
- Skyrme-type interaction shows stronger momentum dependence and less agreement.
- Effective interactions with proper momentum dependence are suitable for transport model simulations.

## Abstract

We study if commonly used nucleon-nucleon effective interactions, obtained from fitting the properties of cold nuclear matter and of finite nuclei, can properly describe the hot dense nuclear matter produced in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions. We use two representative effective interactions, i.e., an improved isospin- and momentum-dependent interaction with its isovector part calibrated by the results from the \emph{ab initio} non-perturbative self-consistent Green's function (SCGF) approach with chiral forces, and a Skyme-type interaction fitted to the equation of state of cold nuclear matter from chiral effective many-body perturbation theory and the binding energy of finite nuclei. In the mean-field approximation, we evaluate the equation of state and the single-nucleon potential for nuclear matter at finite temperatures and compare them to those from the SCGF approach. We find that the improved isospin- and momentum-dependent interaction reproduces reasonably well the SCGF results due to its weaker momentum dependence of the mean-field potential than in the Skyrme-type interaction. Our study thus indicates that effective interactions with the correct momentum dependence of the mean-filed potential can properly describe the properties of hot dense nuclear matter and are thus suitable for use in transport models to study heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies.