Quasi-stationary nonlinear waves in nuclear matter close to pion condensation

The nuclear hydrodynamic model is extended to include the fluctuating spin-isospin density and its interaction with the nuclear matter density. Using the TDHF equations, it is shown that the dynamics of these densities interacting with the pion field can be expressed in terms of the generalized pressures derivable from the generalized nuclear matter equation of state. A phenomenological Skyrme interaction model is used to obtain these pressures. A theory of pion-like spin-isospin quasi-stationary nonlinear waves is formulated from the generalized hydroequations describing the dynamics of a coupled pion nuclear matter system. In the lowest order of nonlinearity, it is proved that the amplitude of the spin-isospin sound wave satisfies a nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The solution of these equations is the amplitude modulated pion-like solitary waves in nuclear matter. When this matter is near the pion condensate, the speed of these nonlinear waves is much smaller than that of the ordinary sound waves. An implication of the solitary waves excited in such nuclear matter produced in heavy ion collisions is discussed. The characteristic signature of breaking of such waves, produced in a heavy ion central collision, is the emission of a delayed component of correlated nucleons (possibly also with a pion) peaked in the forward direction. It may be that the lighter nuclei³He and³H are produced through such a mechanism.     

Abnormal nuclear matter and pion condensation

The possibility of nuclear matter undergoing a combined phase transition into abnormal matter and a pion condensate is investigated. Various lagrangians for the meson (σ and π_i) fields, based on the σ-models, are used in mean-field approximation, and the entire system (mesons + nucleons) is treated fully relativistically. Equilibrium conditions of nuclear matter are obtained with NN repulsion, parametrized by the excluded volume approximation. It turns out that the formation of abnormal matter depends crucially on the choice of the σ-model lagrangian and considerably less on the additional pion condensate.     

Pion condensation in symmetric nuclear matter

Using a model which is based essentially on the chiral SU(2)×SU(2) symmetry of the pion-nucleon interaction, we examine the possibility of pion condensation in symmetric nucleon matter. We find that the pion condensation is not likely to occur in symmetric nuclear matter for any finite value of the nuclear density. Consequently, no critical opalescence phenomenom is expected to be seen in the pion-nucleus interaction.     

A new approach to evaluate nuclear medium effects

The effect of the nuclear medium is considered in terms of an effective pion background field and a new way of evaluation is proposed. Namely, in the scattering of a kaon from a nucleon in the nuclear matter, the effect of the classical pion cloud is attributed to the individual nucleon through a background field termu(x) in the extended Dirac equation. By employing several ansatz for the pion field, the agreement between the calculated result and experimental data is obtained.Partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC)     

Tensor optimized antisymmetrized molecular dynamics for relativistic nuclear matter

We apply a newly developed many-body theory, tensor optimized antisymmetrized molecular dynamics (TOAMD), to nuclear matter using a relativistic bare nucleon-nucleon interaction in the relativistic framework. It becomes evident that the tensor interaction plays an important role in nuclear many-body system due to the role of the pion in a strongly interacting system. We take the relativistic nuclear matter (RNM) wave function as a basic state and add tensor and short-range correlation operators in the form of pion and omega-meson correlation functions acting on the RNM wave function using the concept of TOAMD. We use the Monte Carlo (Metropolis) method based on the Gaussian integration and the second quantization method for antisymmetrization to calculate all the matrix elements of the many-body Hamiltonian. We write the whole formula of the TOAMD method for numerical calculations of the nuclear binding and saturation properties of nuclear matter using one-boson exchange potential.     

Pions in isospin asymmetric matter and nuclear Drell-Yan scattering

Using a self-consistent delta-hole model the pion propagation in isospin asymmetric nuclear matter is studied. In neutron-rich matter, corresponding to heavy nuclei, a significant difference in positive and negative pion light-cone distributions is obtained leading to a nuclear enhancement of up antiquark distribution compared to the down antiquark one. This means that the sea-quark asymmetry in the free nucleon cannot be extracted model independently from an experiment on a neutron-rich nucleus.     

Self-consistent inclusion of pion polarisation in the relativistic Dirac-Brueckner approach to nuclear matter

We investigate the influence of pion polarisation effects in the Dirac-Brueckner approach. The pion polarisation is included preserving the self-consistency of the DB approach. Results for single-particle properties, equation of state, and total effective cross sections in symmetric nuclear matter are presented. Also, we calculated the pion condensation threshold.     

Spin-isospin density fluctuations in nuclear collisions

The possible build-up of the spin-isospin fluctuation strength in nuclear collisions is investigated. In lack of quantum mechanical methods we rely on assumptions usually applied for heavy ion collisions. Based on a fluid dynamical picture we present our ‘isospin coupling in a nucleon cascade’. Within this framework it is possible to describe the mean isospin value as a function of the number of participants in a heavy ion collision and it is possible to study the effect of neutron excess. Since the pion field couples to the spin-isospin density a substantial size of this quantity gives rise to pion bremsstrahlung, the dominant subthreshold pion production mechanism.     

Charge-constrained coherent pion states produced in nuclear matter

In a recent article, Bloss, Hone and Scalapino have used a simplified model Hamiltonian and Keldysh field theoretic methods to approximately calculate the power radiated as Cherenkov charged pions whose emission is triggered when a fast nucleon traverses nuclear matter. The model used by these authors conserves charge by flipping the isospin state of the fast nucleon alone for each charged pion emitted. Since it is the nuclear matter excited by the fast nucleon which should be largely reponsible for emitting the Cherenkov charged pions, we investigate an alternate model that allows all the disturbed nuclear matter to change its charge state when a charged pion is emitted—as an idealization, the emitting matter is assumed to have an infinite number of charge states, in contrast to the two of the fast nucleon. This modified model is shown to be exactly solvable in terms of charge-constrained coherent pion states; the power radiated as charged pions is found to be approximately twice that calculated by Bloss et al. from their model.     

Delta and pion abundances in hot dense nuclear matter and the nuclear equation of state

Delta and pion abundances in hot dense nuclear matter are calculated self-consistently within a relativistic mean-field model for different equations of state. The density of deltas turns out to be much more sensitive to the effective masses of the baryons than to the stiffness of the equation of state. The results are compared to experimental pion yields from intermediate-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. The influence of deviations from thermal momentum distributions for the baryons is estimated.     

Pion bremsstrahlung and critical phenomena in relativistic nuclear collisions

We investigate the dependence of pion bremsstrahlung on the deceleration of the nuclei in relativistic heavy ion collisions. The vicinity of an abnormal phase in nuclear matter can lead - owing to critical N-N scattering - to faster deceleration or decreasing transparency of the nuclei. This would result in a threshold enhancement of the pion bremsstrahlung cross section, which in turn can be used to search for abnormal nuclear states experimentally.     

Study of the asymmetric nuclear matter with pion dressing

We discuss here a self-consistent method to calculate the properties of the cold asymmetric nuclear matter. The nuclear matter is dressed with s-wave pion pairs. The nucleon-nucleon (N-N) interaction is mediated by these pion pairs, ∞ and ρ mesons. The parameters of these interactions are calculated selfconsistently to obtain the saturation properties like equilibrium binding energy, pressure, compressibility and symmetry energy. The computed equation of state is then used in the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff (TOV) equation to study the mass and radius of a neutron star containing pure neutron matter.     

Chiral dynamics of nuclear saturation

We apply the relativistic chiral Lagrangian to the nuclear equation of state. An effective chiral power expansion scheme, which is constructed to work around nuclear saturation density, is presented. The leading and subleading terms are evaluated and are shown to provide an excellent equation of state. Our saturation mechanism is found to probe in detail the underlying pion dynamics.     

Mesonic wakes in nuclear matter,with application to meson production in nuclear collisions

The process of meson production by a source moving uniformly through infinite nuclear matter is studied in field theoretic models in which a source-meson coupling is assumed, and in which the only effect of the nuclear medium is to modify the propagator of the mesons. If the meson dispersion relation, ω(k), in the medium becomes space-like in some region of k, k > ω(k), there is, for relativistic source velocities, energy loss to the mesonic excitations. Models of the pion propagator in nuclear matter lead to such a space-like region. Rates of pion production are calculated in the lowest order of the pion-source coupling. Consideration of higher order terms leads to an interesting class of problems which we designate as those of “non-Abelian Cherenkov radiation.” Brief consideration is given to the excitation of nuclear collective modes and to the problems of treating meson production in finite nuclei.     

Kaon and antikaon properties in cold nuclear medium

We present results of a self-consistent calculation for the kaon and antikaon spectral functions in cold nuclear matter, using as input the kaon-nucleon and antikaon-nucleon scattering amplitudes of the vacuum. We investigate the effect of in-medium pion dressing on the antikaon-nucleon scattering amplitudes and antikaon spectral function. We find the influence of pion dressing to be minor on the antikaon spectral function and limited on the hyperon resonances causing only a small additional broadening. An exception is the Σ(1690). At nuclear saturation density an attractive mass shift of about 20 MeV and width of about 130 MeV is obtained. The kaon shows a repulsive mass increase of 36 MeV and a small width of the quasiparticle peak at saturation density.     

Theory of nuclear fission by stopped pions

Nuclear fission by stopped pions is analyzed in a two-step model in which the pion is absorbed on a nucleon pair, followed by the prompt emission of one nucleon and compound nucleus formation by the other. This simple picture yields agreement with observed prompt neutron spectra and average nucleon multiplicities. The analysis of nuclear fission in a statistical framework is shown to provide valuable corroboration of the expected properties of a highly excited compound nucleus and of our understanding of the pion absorption mechanism. The ratio of fission to neutron level density parameters is shown to exceed unity in all cases studied.     

Sensitivity of pion production to the nuclear EOS and to the delta's coupling constant

A relativistic baryon-meson mean field theory (including delta resonances) is used to study the dependence of pion production in heavy ion collisions on the nuclear equation of state and on the delta-meson coupling constants. For fixed ground state equations of state, the pion yields depend sensitively on the value of the delta-meson coupling constants.     

Probing the pion field in nuclei

It is suggested that muon absorption and doubly radiative pion absorption in nuclei can complement each other in probing the pion field in the nuclear medium. The relevant issues we consider are possible pion condensation and nuclear “renormalization” of weak and electromagnetic vertices, the adequate understanding of which is necessary to extract from nuclear experiments useful information on basic form factors in the weak Hamiltonian.     

Medium polarization and short-range effects in the meson exchange charge operator

The role of the medium polarization caused by the pion and rho-meson interactions in nuclear media for the corresponding meson exchange contributions to nuclear charge form factors is investigated. It is shown that the medium polarization and short-range effects slightly reduce the pion exchange contribution but that this reduction is more than compensated for by the ρ-meson exchange contribution. The combined pion and ρ-meson contributions to nuclear charge form factors is larger than previously estimated pion exchange corrections obtained without account of the medium polarization.