Novel features of asymmetric nuclear matter from terrestrial experiments and astrophysical observations of neutron stars
The accurate measurement of neutron skin thickness of 208Pb by the PREX Collaboration suggests a large value of the nuclear symmetry energy slope parameter, L, whereas the smaller L is preferred to account for the small neutron-star radii from NICER observations. To resolve this discrepancy between...
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2025-02-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Physics |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphy.2024.1531475/full |
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| Summary: | The accurate measurement of neutron skin thickness of 208Pb by the PREX Collaboration suggests a large value of the nuclear symmetry energy slope parameter, L, whereas the smaller L is preferred to account for the small neutron-star radii from NICER observations. To resolve this discrepancy between nuclear experiments and astrophysical observations, new effective interactions have been developed using relativistic mean-field models with the isoscalar- and isovector-meson mixing. We investigate the effects of δ-nucleon coupling and σ–δ mixing on the ground-state properties of finite nuclei, as well as the characteristics of isospin-asymmetric nuclear matter and neutron stars. Additionally, we explore the role of the quartic ρ-meson self-interaction in dense nuclear matter to mitigate the stiff equation of state for neutron stars resulting from the large δ-nucleon coupling. It is found that the nuclear symmetry energy undergoes a sudden softening at approximately twice the saturation density of nuclear matter, taking into account the PREX-2 result, the recent NICER observation of PSR J0437−4715, and the binary neutron star merger, GW170817. |
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| ISSN: | 2296-424X |