High density behaviour of nuclear symmetry energy

D. N. Basu, Tapan Mukhopadhyay

Published 2006-03-31, updated 2006-12-27Version 2

Role of the isospin asymmetry in nuclei and neutron stars, with an emphasis on the density dependence of the nuclear symmetry energy, is discussed. The symmetry energy is obtained using the isoscalar as well as isovector components of the density dependent M3Y effective interaction. The constants of density dependence of the effective interaction are obtained by reproducing the saturation energy per nucleon and the saturation density of spin and isospin symmetric cold infinite nuclear matter. Implications for the density dependence of the symmetry energy in case of a neutron star are discussed, and also possible constraints on the density dependence obtained from finite nuclei are compared.