Influence of in-medium NN cross sections, symmetry potential, and impact parameter on isospin observables

We explore the influence of the in-medium nucleon-nucleon cross section, symmetry potential, and impact parameter on isospin sensitive observables in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions with the ImQMD05 code, a modified version of the quantum molecular dynamics model. At incident velocities above the Fermi velocity, we find that the density dependence of the symmetry potential plays a more important role on the double neutron-to-proton ratio DR(n/p) and the isospin transport ratio R_i than the in-medium nucleon-nucleon cross sections, provided that the latter are constrained to a fixed total NN collision rate. We also explore both DR(n/p) and R_i as a function of the impact parameter. Since the copious production of intermediate mass fragments is a distinguishing feature of intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions, we examine the isospin transport ratios constructed from different groups of fragments. We find that the values of the isospin transport ratios for projectile rapidity fragments with Z⩾20 are greater than those constructed from the entire projectile rapidity source. We believe experimental investigations of this phenomenon can be performed. These may provide significant tests of fragmentation time scales predicted by ImQMD calculations.