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Statistical treatment of nuclear clusters in the continuum
- Source :
- Physical Review C, Physical Review C, American Physical Society, 2021, 103 (1), pp.015803. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevC.103.015803⟩
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- HAL CCSD, 2021.
-
Abstract
- The evaluation of the sub-saturation nuclear equation of state at finite temperature requires a proper state counting of the internal partition sum of nuclei which are immersed in the background of their continuum states. This classical statistical problem is addressed within the self-consistent mean-field approximation, which naturally accounts for isospin and effective mass effects in the nuclear density of states. The nuclear free energy is decomposed into bulk and surface terms, allowing a simple analytical prescription for the subtraction of gas states from the nuclear partition sum, that avoids double counting of unbound single particle states. We show that this correction leads to a sizeable effect in the composition of matter at high temperature and low proton fractions, such as it is formed in supernova collapse, early proto-neutron star evolution, as well as laboratory experiments. Specifically, the energy stored in the internal nuclear degrees of freedom is reduced, as well as the mass fraction of heavy clusters in the statistical equilibrium. The gas subtraction prescription is compared to different phenomenological methods proposed in the literature, based on a high energy truncation of the partition sum. We show that none of these methods satisfactorily reproduces the gas subtracted level density, if the temperature overcomes ~4 MeV.<br />18 pages, 6 figures
- Subjects :
- Physics
Nuclear Theory
Continuum (measurement)
[PHYS.NUCL]Physics [physics]/Nuclear Theory [nucl-th]
010308 nuclear & particles physics
FOS: Physical sciences
Approx
01 natural sciences
Computational physics
Nuclear Theory (nucl-th)
Supernova
Effective mass (solid-state physics)
Isospin
0103 physical sciences
Nuclear Astrophysics
Partition (number theory)
010306 general physics
Nuclear Experiment
Mass fraction
Nuclear density
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 24699985 and 24699993
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Physical Review C, Physical Review C, American Physical Society, 2021, 103 (1), pp.015803. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevC.103.015803⟩
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....ed793f1e16e98543173a9543eee41aaf