Exploration of Nuclear Matter Properties and Related Thermodynamical Aspects

Abstract

The present thesis aims to understand the properties of nuclear matter over a wide range of temperatures, density, isospin-asymmetry, pressure and magnetic field. The precise knowledge of the effect of these variables on the nuclear matter is of prime importance due to their relevance in various nuclear physics and astrophysical phenomena such as heavy-ion reactions, nuclear multifragmentation, the neutron star, supernovae etc. The effective relativistic mean field model (E-RMF) is used for the nuclear interaction to achieve these objectives. The nuclear matter is investigated in three forms: infinite nuclear matter, finite nuclei and the neutron star. In the first part, the infinite nuclear matter is investigated to estimate the critical properties in the context of liquid-gas phase transition, finite temperature effects and modifications in the equation of state (EoS) due to temperature. Extending the infinite matter, the second part of the thesis studies various properties of hot nuclei and their dependence on the EoS. Possible correlations among the critical properties with respect to a hot nucleus and infinite nuclear matter are discussed in this part. The third part of the thesis aims to study the neutron star interior with a main focus on the neutron star crust. The neutron star crust is investigated for the unmagnetised and magnetised matter, in context to pulsars and magnetars. The thesis is divided into eight chapters which are briefly described below. Chapter 1 discusses the essential concepts and definitions used in the thesis with an appropriate literature review. It begins with the description of the nuclear matter phase diagram advocating the importance of precise knowledge of nuclear interaction to describe various associated phenomena. The liquid-gas phase transition in the nuclear matter in the lowdensity regime is discussed for both infinite and finite nuclear matter. Next, the neutron star, a prominent aspect of the phase diagram, is discussed in detail with emphasis on its interior structure.