Physics Letters B 769 (2017) 424–429
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
Pre-equilibrium effects in charge-asymmetric low-energy reactions
H. Zheng
a,∗
, S. Burrello
a,b
, M. Colonna
a
, V. Baran
c
a
Laboratori Nazionali del Sud, INFN, I-95123 Catania, Italy
b
Physics and Astronomy Department, University of Catania, Italy
c
Faculty of Physics, University of Bucharest, Romania
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
19 December 2016
Received
in revised form 3 April 2017
Accepted
3 April 2017
Available
online 13 April 2017
Editor: J.-P.
Blaizot
Keywords:
Low-energy
nuclear reactions
Pre-equilibrium
effects
Dynamical
dipole
Symmetry
energy
We study the pre-equilibrium dipole response in the charge-asymmetric reaction
132
Sn +
58
Ni at E
lab
=
10 MeV/A, within a semi-classical transport model employing effective interactions for the nuclear mean-
field.
In particular, we adopt the recently introduced SAMi-J Skyrme interactions, whose parameters
are specifically tuned to improve the description of spin–isospin properties of nuclei. Within the same
framework, we also discuss pre-equilibrium nucleon emission. Our results show that both mechanisms,
i.e., pre-equilibrium dipole oscillations and nucleon emission, are sensitive to the symmetry energy below
the saturation density ρ
0
(in the range 0.6ρ
0
− ρ
0
), to the momentum dependence of the mean-field
potential and to the nucleon–nucleon cross section. Finally, a correlation analysis is applied to examine
the impact of the model parameters on observables of experimental interest.
© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP
3
.
1. Introduction
Heavy ion reactions at energies just above the Coulomb barrier
are governed, to a large extent, by one-body dissipation mecha-
nisms.
The main reaction path ranges from (incomplete) fusion to
binary exit channels, such as deep-inelastic or quasi-fission pro-
cesses.
However, in spite of the apparent simplicity of the reaction
dynamics, quite intriguing features may manifest along the fu-
sion/fission
path, reflecting the complexity of the self-consistent
mean-field, and structure effects may still play a role [1,2].
Furthermore,
new interesting phenomena, linked to the charge
equilibration mechanism, appear in reactions between charge-
asymmetric
systems. If the reaction partners have appreciably dif-
ferent
N/Z ratios, the proton and neutron centers of mass of the
reacting system may not coincide during the early stages of the
collision. Then, apart from incoherent exchange of nucleons be-
tween
the colliding ions, collective oscillations of protons against
neutrons might occur on the way to fusion, along the symme-
try
axis of the composite system. This is the so-called dynami-
cal
dipole (DD) mode or pre-equilibrium giant dipole resonance
(GDR) [3–10]. In (incomplete) fusion reactions, the shape of the
pre-equilibrium dinuclear complex may exhibit a large prolate de-
formation
as compared to the shape finally reached by the equili-
brated
compound nucleus. Consequently, the pre-equilibrium ra-
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail
address: zheng@lns.infn.it (H. Zheng).
diation carries out relevant information about the shape of the
system, as well as insight into the charge equilibration, and pro-
vides
a cooling effect along the fusion path, possibly favoring the
formation of superheavy elements [11,12]. Thus one expects the
DD to be influenced by different parameters, like charge and mass
asymmetry, collision centrality and energy [3,9,13]. One should
also consider that, within the optimal beam energy for the inves-
tigation
of the DD (around 10 MeV/A), pre-equilibrium emission
of nucleons and light particles can occur. This effect contributes to
cool down the system and may reduce the initial charge asymme-
try
of the colliding nuclei, owing to the favored neutron emission
in neutron-rich systems.
Similar
to the GDR, DD oscillations are governed mainly by the
isovector channel of the nuclear effective interaction, which pro-
vides
the restoring force. We note that the isovector terms are
connected to the symmetry energy of the nuclear Equation of State
(EoS), on which several investigations are concentrated nowadays
[14–16]. Indeed, the DD mechanism, as well as the N/Z ratio of the
pre-equilibrium nucleon emission, has been proposed as a possible
tool to probe the low-density behavior of the symmetry energy
[9,10,17]. It is worthwhile to mention that the latter plays an es-
sential
role in nuclear structure [18] (determining for instance the
thickness of the neutron skin in neutron-rich nuclei), as well as in
the astrophysical context, for the description of low-density clus-
tering
in compact stars [19,20].
As
already stressed above, in low energy dissipative collisions,
we expect structure effects, such as ground state properties and
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2017.04.002
0370-2693/
© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by
SCOAP
3
.