STUDY OF THE EQUATION OF STATE FOR ASYMMETRIC NUCLEAR-MATTER AND INTERACTION POTENTIAL BETWEEN NEUTRON-RICH NUCLEI USING THE DENSITY-DEPENDENT M3Y INTERACTION

Realistic versions of the M3Y effective nucleon-nucleon interaction ha ve been used to calculate the basic properties of asymmetric nuclear m atter within a non-relativistic Hartree-Fock scheme. Special attention was devoted to the dependence of the binding energy, pressure and inc ompressibility upon the neutron-proton asymmetry, Our results reproduc e reasonably well the empirical value of the symmetry energy and the s oftening of the equation of state for neutron-rich nuclear matter, as suggested in several supernova studies. The same effective interaction has been further used to calculate the interaction potential between neutron-rich nuclei within an extended version of the double-folding m odel, where the knock-on exchange and the isospin dependence of the nu cleon-nucleon interaction are treated explicitly. The symmetry (isospi n-dependent) term of the central nucleus-nucleus potential was found t o be negligible compared to the isoscalar term. An exploratory study o f the elastic He-8,Li-11+C-14 scattering was performed using the new f olded potentials, and possible signatures of the He-8,Li-11 neutron ha los in these processes have been discussed.