Transport properties of asymmetric nuclear matter in the spinodal region

Abstract

We have studied the shear and bulk viscosities of asymmetric nuclear matter in the mechanical and chemical instability region based on IBUU transport simulations in a box system. The Green-Kubo method is used to calculate these viscosities with a prepared dynamically equilibrated nuclear system with hot clusters. While the behavior of the shear viscosity is largely affected by energy-dependent nucleon-nucleon cross sections, the bulk viscosity increases significantly in the presence of nuclear clusters compared to that in uniform nuclear matter. Increasing isospin asymmetry generally increases both viscosities, while their behaviors are qualitatively modified once the isospin asymmetry is large enough to affect significantly the spinodal region. Our calculation shows that the bulk viscosity is more sensitive to the nuclear clustering than the shear viscosity, and is thus a robust quantity related to the phase diagram of asymmetric nuclear matter.