Reassessing nuclear matter incompressibility and its density dependence

Experimental giant monopole resonance energies are now known to constrain nuclear incompressibility of symmetric nuclear matter K and its density slope M at a particular value of subsaturation density, the crossing density rho(c). Consistent with these constraints, we propose a reasonable way to construct a plausible equation of state of symmetric nuclear matter in a broad density region around the saturation density rho(0). Help of two additional empirical inputs, the value of rho(0) and that of the energy per nucleon e(rho(0)) are needed. The value of K(rho(0)) comes out to be 211.9 +/- 24.5 MeV.