Symmetry energy dependence of light fragment production in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

The pre-equilibrium light cluster emission in low to intermediate energy heavy ion collisions is a way to obtain information about the density and momentum dependence of the nuclear symmetry potential, i.e. about the stiffness of the symmetry energy and the neutron-proton effective mass splitting. We study the n/p and t/3He ratios as a function of the energy of the emitted particles and find that these allow to disentangle these two aspects of the symmetry energy. The t/3He ratios are found to carry similar information as the n/p ratios, making this a promising option for experimental investigations. More n-rich systems enhance the sensitivity to the symmetry energy, while double ratios between n-rich and n-poor systems tend to reduce it.