Symmetry Energy Dependence of Light Fragment Production in Heavy Ion Collisions

¹ Fac.of Physics, University of Munich, D-85748 Garching, Germany
² Smith College, Northampton, Mass. 01063, USA
³ INFN, Laboratori Nazionali del Sud, I-95123, Catania, Italy
⁴ LPC Caen, Univ. de Caen, F-14050 Caen, France
⁵ GANIL, F-14076 Cedex, France

^a e-mail: hermann.wolter@lmu.de

Published online: 20 March 2014

Abstract

We study the pre-equilibrium light cluster emission in low to intermediate energy heavy ion collisions in transport simulations as a means to obtain information about the density and momentum dependence of the nuclear symmetry potential, i.e. about the asy-stiffness and the neutron-proton effective mass splitting of the symmetry energy. We find that the study of n/p and t/³He ratios as a function of the energy of the emitted particles may allow to disentangle these two behaviors The t/³He ratios appear 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. A preliminary comparison to experimental data for the ^136,124Xe +^124,112Sn systems is also shown.