Symmetry Energy and the Pauli Exclusion Principle

In this article we present a classical potential that respects the Pauli exclusion principle and can be used to describe nucleon-nucleon interactions at intermediate energies. The potential depends on the relative momentum of the colliding nucleons and reduces interactions at low momentum transfer mimicking the Pauli exclusion principle. We use the potential with Metropolis Monte Carlo methods and study the formation of finite nuclei and infinite systems. We find good agreement in terms of the binding energies, radii, and internal nucleon distribution of finite nuclei, and the binding energy in nuclear matter and neutron star matter, as well as the formation of nuclear pastas, and the symmetry energy of neutron star matter.

Ξ hyper-nuclear states predicted by NLO chiral baryon-baryon interactions

The Ξ single-particle potential obtained in nuclear matter with the next-to-leading order baryon-baryon interactions in chiral effective field theory is applied to finite nuclei by an improved local-density approximation method. As a premise, phase shifts of ΞN elastic scattering and the results of Faddeev calculations for the ΞNN bound state problem are presented to show the properties of the ΞN interactions in the present parametrization. First, the Ξ states in 14N are revisited because of the recent experimental progress, including the discussion on the ΞN spin-orbit interaction that is relevant to the location of the p-state. Then the Ξ levels in 56Fe are calculated. In particular, the level shift which is expected to be measured experimentally in the near future is predicted. The smallness of the imaginary part of the Ξ single-particle potential is explicitly demonstrated.

Unified Equation of State for Neutron Stars Based on the Gogny Interaction

The effective Gogny interactions of the D1 family were established by D. Gogny more than forty years ago with the aim to describe simultaneously the mean field and the pairing field corresponding to the nuclear interaction. The most popular Gogny parametrizations, namely D1S, D1N and D1M, describe accurately the ground-state properties of spherical and deformed finite nuclei all across the mass table obtained with Hartree–Fock–Bogoliubov (HFB) calculations. However, these forces produce a rather soft equation of state (EoS) in neutron matter, which leads to predict maximum masses of neutron stars well below the observed value of two solar masses. To remove this limitation, we built new Gogny parametrizations by modifying the density dependence of the symmetry energy predicted by the force in such a way that they can be applied to the neutron star domain and can also reproduce the properties of finite nuclei as good as their predecessors. These new parametrizations allow us to obtain stiffer EoS’s based on the Gogny interactions, which predict maximum masses of neutron stars around two solar masses. Moreover, other global properties of the star, such as the moment of inertia and the tidal deformability, are in harmony with those obtained with other well tested EoSs based on the SLy4 Skyrme force or the Barcelona–Catania–Paris–Madrid (BCPM) energy density functional. Properties of the core-crust transition predicted by these Gogny EoSs are also analyzed. Using these new Gogny forces, the EoS in the inner crust is obtained with the Wigner–Seitz approximation in the Variational Wigner–Kirkwood approach along with the Strutinsky integral method, which allows one to estimate in a perturbative way the proton shell and pairing corrections. For the outer crust, the EoS is determined basically by the nuclear masses, which are taken from the experiments, wherever they are available, or by HFB calculations performed with these new forces if the experimental masses are not known.

Manifestation of hidden symmetries in baryonic matter: From finite nuclei to neutron stars

When hadron-quark continuity is formulated in terms of a topology change at a density higher than twice the nuclear matter density [Formula: see text], the core of massive compact stars can be described in terms of quasiparticles of fractional baryon charges, behaving neither like pure baryons nor like deconfined quarks. Hidden symmetries, both local gauge and pseudo-conformal (or broken scale), emerge and give rise both to the long-standing “effective [Formula: see text]” in nuclear Gamow–Teller (GT) transitions at [Formula: see text] and to the pseudo-conformal sound velocity [Formula: see text] at [Formula: see text]. It is suggested that what has been referred to, since a long time, as “quenched [Formula: see text]” in light nuclei reflects what leads to the dilaton-limit [Formula: see text] at near the (putative) infrared fixed point of scale invariance. These properties are confronted with the recent observations in GT transitions and in astrophysical observations.