EPJ Web of Conferences 88, 00017 (2015)
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/20158800017

Symmetry energy systematics and its high density behavior

Department of Physics and Astronomy and Shanghai Key Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

^* lwchen@sjtu.edu.cn

Published online: 24 April 2015

Abstract

We explore the systematics of the density dependence of nuclear matter symmetry energy in the ambit of microscopic calculations with various energy density functionals, and find that the symmetry energy from subsaturation density to supra-saturation density can be well determined by three characteristic parameters of the symmetry energy at saturation density ρ₀, i.e., the magnitude E_sym(ρ₀), the density slope L and the density curvature K_sym. This finding opens a new window to constrain the supra-saturation density behavior of the symmetry energy from its (sub-)saturation density behavior. In particular, we obtain L = 46.7 ± 12.8 MeV and K_sym = −166.9 ± 168.3 MeV as well as E_sym(2ρ₀) ≈ 40.2 ± 12.8 MeV and L(2ρ₀) ≈ 8.9±108.7 MeV based on the present knowledge of E_sym(ρ₀) = 32.5 ± 0.5 MeV, E_sym(ρ_c) = 26.65±0.2 MeV and L(ρ_c) = 46.0±4.5 MeV at ρ_c = 0.11 fm⁻³ extracted from nuclear mass and the neutron skin thickness of Sn isotopes. Our results indicate that the symmetry energy cannot be stiffer than a linear density dependence. In addition, we also discuss the quark matter symmetry energy since the deconfined quarks could be the right degree of freedom in dense matter at high baryon densities.