Isospin Effects: Nuclear Fragmentation as a Probe

With the advancement in radioactive ion beam facilities, the interest of nuclear physics community is shifted toward investigating the role of isopin dependence of equation of state in reaction dynamics of heavy-ion collisions. Here, we probe isospin effects via nuclear multifragmentation. Using the isospin-dependent quantum molecular dynamics (IQMD) model, we present the study of reactions of isotopic and isobaric pairs. Here, we studied the \(E_{c.m.}^{max}\) (the energy corresponding to maximal production of fragments) for various fragments produced in multifragmentation. It has been observed that the peak energy is governed by symmetry potential in comparison to isospin dependence of NN cross section. We further continued the study by dividing the final fragmentation pattern into free particles (A = 1) and fragments (A > 1) by labeling them as gas and liquid, respectively. We studied the energy dependence of gas/liquid content for different reactions. Our investigation revealed an existence of cross-over energy (the energy corresponding to equal contribution of gas and liquid contents) which is greatly influenced by symmetry energy rather than isospin dependence of nn cross section. Further, our study revealed that cross-over energy is sensitive to density dependence of nuclear symmetry energy as well, thus can be used as a good probe for the same at supra-saturation densities.