V Simpósio do INCT-FNA

Symmetry energy dependence of the bulk viscosity of nuclear matter

4 Dec 2025, 14:00

20m

Auditório Paulo Gomes (Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal Fluminense)

Paralela Altas Energias

Speaker

Mauricio Hippert (Brazilian Center for Research in Physics)

Description

We clarify how the weak-interaction-driven bulk viscosity ζ and the bulk relaxation time $\tau_\Pi$ of neutrino-transparent $npe$ matter depend on the nuclear symmetry energy. We show that, at saturation density, the equation-of-state dependence of these transport quantities is fully determined by the experimentally constrained nuclear symmetry energy S and its slope L. Variations of L within current experimental uncertainties can change the bulk viscosity by orders of magnitude. This suggests that dissipative effects encoded in the gravitational-wave signatures of binary neutron star inspirals may help constrain nuclear symmetry energy properties.