THE NUCLEAR SYMMETRY ENERGY IN HEAVY-ION COLLISIONS

摘要

In this article we discuss the nuclear symmetry energy in the regime of hadronic degrees of freedom. The density dependence of the symmetry energy is important from very low densities in supernova explosions, to the structure of neutron-rich nuclei around saturation density, and to several times saturation density in neutron stars. Heavy-ion collisions are the only means to study this density dependence in the laboratory. Transport theories are used to extract the symmetry energy from heavy-ion collisions. We finally study some examples, which relate particularly to the high density symmetry energy, which is of particular interest today. We point out the status and open problems in the theoretical analyses of HIC.