Abstract
The energy of a free gas of neutrons and protons is well known to be approximately isospin parabolic with a negligibly small quartic term of only MeV at the saturation density of nuclear matter . Using an isospin-dependent single-nucleon momentum distribution including a high (low) momentum tail (depletion) with its shape parameters constrained by recent high-energy electron scattering and medium-energy nuclear photodisintegration experiments as well as the state-of-the-art calculations of the deuteron wave function and the equation of state of pure neutron matter near the unitary limit within several modern microscopic many-body theories, we show for the first time that the kinetic energy of interacting nucleons in neutron-rich nucleonic matter has a significant quartic term of MeV. Such a large quartic term has broad ramifications in determining the equation of state of neutron-rich nucleonic matter using observables of nuclear reactions and neutron stars.
- Received 3 March 2015
- Revised 11 June 2015
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.92.011601
©2015 American Physical Society