A Microscopic Study of Nuclear Symmetry Energy with an Effective Interaction Derived from Variational Calculations

In this paper, a microscopic calculation of nuclear symmetry energy has been carried out with a new M3Y-type effective interaction derived from variational calculations. The new effective interaction, called B3Y-Fetal in this work, has been used in its DDM3Y1, BDM3Y0 and BDM3Y1 density dependent versions within the framework of Hartree-Fock approximation to obtain the values of 30.5, 30.6 and 30.7 MeV respectively for symmetry energy at the nuclear matter saturation density, ρ₀ = 0.17 fm^-3. When compared with an empirical symmetry energy of 31.6 ± 2.7 MeV established based on several analyses of terrestrial Nuclear Physics experiments and astronomical observations, these values of symmetry energy have been found to be in excellent agreement. The curves of symmetry energy obtained with the three density-dependent versions of the B3Y-Fetal effective interaction at different proton-neutron asymmetries in this work have also been found to demonstrate good agreement with previous work done with M3Y-Reid and M3Y- Paris effective interactions

Keywords: microscopic study, nuclear, symmetry energy, variational calculations