Symmetry energy from neutron-rich fragments in heavy-ion collisions, and its dependence on incident energy, and impact parameters

The yields of fragments produced in the 60Ni+ 12C reactions at 80 A and 140 A MeV, and with maximum impact parameters of 1.5, 2 and 7.3 fm at 80 A MeV are calculated by the statistical abrasion-ablation model. The yields of fragments are analyzed by the isobaric yield ratio (IYR) method to extract the coefficient of symmetry energy to temperature (asym/T ). The incident energy is found to influence asym/T very little. It’s found that asym/T of fragments with the same neutron-excess I = N-Z increases when A increases, while asym/T of isobars decreases when A increases. The asym/T of prefragments is rather smaller than that of the final fragments, and the asym/T of fragments in small impact parameters is smaller than that of the larger impact parameters, which both indicate that asym/T decreases when the temperature increases. The choice of the reference IYRs is found to have influence on the extracted a sym /T of fragments, especially on the results of the more neutron-rich fragments. The surface-symmetry energy coefficient (bs/T ) and the volume-symmetry energy coefficient (bv/T) are also extracted, and the bs/bv is found to coincide with the theoretical results.