The Quantum Nature of a Nuclear Phase Transition

Abstract

In their ground states, atomic nuclei are quantum Fermi liquids. At finite temperatures and low densities, these nuclei may undergo a phase change similar to, but substantially different from, a classical liquid gas phase transition. As in the classical case, temperature is the control parameter while density and pressure are the conjugate variables. At variance with the classical case, in the nucleus the difference between the proton and neutron concentrations acts as an additional order parameter, for which the symmetry potential is the conjugate variable. Different ratios of the neutron to proton concentrations lead to different critical points for the phase transition. This is analogous to the phase transitions occurring in ${}^4$He-${}^3$He liquid mixtures. We present experimental results which reveal the N/Z dependence of the phase transition and discuss possible implications of these observations in terms of the Landau Free Energy description of critical phenomena.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Reaction Dynamics with Exotic Beams
• Phase Transitions in Warm, Asymmetric Nuclear Matter
• The liquid to vapor phase transition in excited nuclei
• Antisymmetrized molecular dynamics with quantum branching processes for collisions of heavy nuclei
• Thermodynamical features of multifragmentation in peripheral Au + Au Collisions at 35 A.MeV
• Circumstantial Evidence for a Critical Behavior in Peripheral Au + Au Collisions at 35 MeV/nucleon
• The complement: a solution to liquid drop finite size effects in phase transitions
• Statistical properties of antisymmetrized molecular dynamics for non-nucleon-emission and nucleon-emission processes
• Scaling in the Lattice Gas Model
• Searching for the Nuclear Liquid-Gas Phase Transition in Au + Au Collisions at 35 MeV/nucleon

Cited by in corpus (30)

• Isobaric Yield Ratios and The Symmetry Energy In Fermi Energy Heavy Ion Reactions
• The many facets of the (non relativistic) Nuclear Equation of State
• Measuring the Temperature of Hot Nuclear Fragments
• Density and Temperature of Fermions from Quantum Fluctuations
• Nuclear liquid-gas phase transition with machine learning
• Isobaric yield ratios in heavy-ion reactions, and symmetry energy of neutron-rich nuclei at intermediate energies
• Constraining the Symmetry Term in the Nuclear Equation of State at Sub-Saturation Densities and Finite Temperatures
• A novel approach to Isoscaling: the role of the order parameter m = (N-Z)/A
• The Isospin Dependence Of The Nuclear Equation Of State Near The Critical Point
• Isocaling and the Symmetry Energy in the Multifragmentation Regime of Heavy Ion Collisions
• Asymmetry Dependence of the Nuclear Caloric Curve
• Density and Temperature of Bosons from Quantum Fluctuations
• A novel determination of density, temperature and symmetry energy for nuclear multi-fragmentation through primary fragment yield reconstruction
• Higher Order Corrections to Density and Temperature of Fermions from Quantum Fluctuations
• Primary Isotope Yields and Characteristic Properties of the Fragmenting Source in Heavy-ion Reactions near the Fermi Energies
• Experimental reconstruction of primary hot isotopes and characteristic properties of the fragmenting source in the heavy ion reactions near the Fermi energy
• Analysis of fragment yield ratios in the nuclear phase transition
• Coulomb corrections to density and temperature of bosons in heavy ion collisions
• Coulomb corrections to density and temperature in heavy ion collisions
• Reconstructed primary fragments and symmetry energy, temperature and density of the fragmenting source in ${}^{64}$Zn + ${}^{112}$Sn at 40 MeV/nucleon
• Sensitivity study of experimental measures for the nuclear liquid-gas phase transition in the statistical multifragmentation model
• Critical Scaling of Two-component Systems from Quantum Fluctuations
• Nuclear Matter and Nuclear Dynamics
• Competition between fermions and bosons in nuclear matter at low densities and finite temperatures
• Statistical analysis of experimental multifragmentation events in ${}^{64}$Zn + ${}^{112}$Sn at 40 MeV/nucleon
• Novel technique to extract experimental symmetry free energy information of nuclear matter
• Investigation of the nuclear liquid-gas phase transition in the static AMD
• Density and Temperature in Heavy Ion Collisions: A Test of Classical and Quantum Approaches
• Neutron stars and supernova explosions in the framework of Landau's theory
• Particle-number fluctuations near the critical point of nuclear matter