Tuesday afternoon Jorge Lopez from the University of Texas, El Paso gave a talk on nuclear isoscaling. The talk was chock-filled with bouncy animations and methods of studying nuclear isoscaling galore. Alas, I'm still not quite sure what nuclear isoscaling is.
I know that it is strongly related to (or is?) a ratio R, which is equal to the ratio of the number of fragments caused by given heavy ion collisions. The numerator of the ratio is the number of fragments produced in a collision for which there is a high N/Z ratio and the denominator has a low N/Z ratio. Perhaps this R parameter is isoscaling itself? I am not sure as it was simply referred to as R for the remainder of the talk.
Apparently nuclear isoscaling can be studied via molecular dynamics, 3D bond percolation, probabilistic sampling of some sort, and dun dun dunnn...experiment! But note: bouncy animations are apparently a requirement.
My favorite point made in the talk actually emerged incidentally in the Q&A session. Wolfgang Bauer pointed out that the percolation model contained just as much nuclear physics as the Bethe-Wiessaker model (for binding energy), except for Coulomb repulsion.
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in my rustic understanding of the subject isoscaling is a fancy name to how many protons and neutrons blow off these heavy ion collisions... the asymmetry in the ratio that tells us something - or a lot - about the nuclear equation of state. Or maybe the fancy name is "isospin diffusion". In any case, I'm basing my reply on past conferences! If you can't find Jorge Lopez to clear your doubts in a coffee break ask some of the students of the HiRA group when you're back home.
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