Nuclear matter properties at finite temperatures from effective interactions

Abstract

We study if commonly used nucleon-nucleon effective interactions, obtained from fitting the properties of cold nuclear matter and of finite nuclei, can properly describe the hot dense nuclear matter produced in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions. We use two representative effective interactions, i.e., an improved isospin- and momentum-dependent interaction with its isovector part calibrated by the results from the \emph{ab initio} non-perturbative self-consistent Green's function (SCGF) approach with chiral forces, and a Skyme-type interaction fitted to the equation of state of cold nuclear matter from chiral effective many-body perturbation theory and the binding energy of finite nuclei. In the mean-field approximation, we evaluate the equation of state and the single-nucleon potential for nuclear matter at finite temperatures and compare them to those from the SCGF approach. We find that the improved isospin- and momentum-dependent interaction reproduces reasonably well the SCGF results due to its weaker momentum dependence of the mean-field potential than in the Skyrme-type interaction. Our study thus indicates that effective interactions with the correct momentum dependence of the mean-filed potential can properly describe the properties of hot dense nuclear matter and are thus suitable for use in transport models to study heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies.