Viscosity of a nucleonic fluid

Abstract

The viscosity of nucleonic matter is studied both classically and in a quantum mechanical description. The collisions between particles are modeled as hard sphere scattering as a baseline for comparison and as scattering from an attractive square well potential. Properties associated with the unitary limit are developed which are shown to be approximately realized for a system of neutrons. The issue of near perfect fluid behavior of neutron matter is remarked on. Using some results from hard sphere molecular dynamics studies near perfect fluid behavior is discussed further.