Temperature-dependent mean field and its effect on heavy-ion reactions

Temperature-dependent mean field potentials of nucleons are obtained by solving the Bethe-Goldstone equation for a realistic force in nuclear matter at finite temperature. For a more efficient utilization of these potentials in studying the heavy-ion reactions using a transport theory, the density and temperature dependence of these potentials is parametrized in a Skyrme type form. These parametrized temperature-dependent potentials are implemented in quantum molecular dynamics. The temperature during the simulations is deduced using a hot Thomas-Fermi approach generalized for the case of two interpenetrating pieces of nuclear matter. First of all, we show that our formalism works well in the nuclear matter limit. In order to study the effect of temperature dependence in the mean-field potential in heavy-ion reactions, the reactions 40Ca+40Ca and 93Nb+93Nb are simulated using both a finite temperature-dependent potential and a temperature-independent (i.e. zero temperature) potential. Our detailed investigation shows that the temperature dependence of the mean field affects the heavy-ion reaction dynamics to a significant amount. These effects are stronger in case of heavier nuclei and are of the same order as the differences between the usual ''soft'' and ''hard'' equation of state. An analytical parametrization of the temperature dependence of the self-consistent field is given in a Skyrme type form. ((orig.))