Splintering central nuclear collisions with a momentum-dependent lattice Hamiltonian theory

Abstract

We formulate a lattice Hamiltonian model for intermediate energy heavy ion collisions. Our approach incorporates a momentum-dependent nuclear mean field that yields an optical potential that agrees with proton-nucleus experiments and that also receives support from measurements involving heavy ions. We emphasize the precision of our numerical results in connection with energy and momentum conservation. We first outline the static properties of our solutions, after which we consider recent stopping power results for heavy ion collisions. The results obtained with different types of nuclear mean fields are compared with each other. Consequences of the stopping power data on the nuclear equation of state are outlined.