Constraining the Lambda-nucleus potential within the Liege intranuclear cascade model

The new version of the Liege intranuclear-cascade model (INCL), recently extended to the production of strange particles and hypernuclei, is used to investigate the Lambda-nucleus potential in a broad range of nuclear masses from Si to Pb. The combination of the INCL calculation results with experimental cross sections of Lambda hypernuclei, obtained from (pi(+), K+) reaction studies, allows us to constrain the Lambda-nucleus potential depth with an accuracy of about 0.9 MeV. Our results show that the potential depth increases with the mass number (A) from 28 MeV in the region of medium-mass hypernuclei up to a maximum of 39.6 MeV in the region of heavy hypernuclei around A = 208. This deviation could be related to the nucleon-isospin dependence of the three-body Lambda-nucleon-nucleon force in asymmetry matter whose contribution is more relevant in hyperneutron matter due to a strong contribution from Ann interactions.