https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/20123100003
Liquid-gas phase transition in nuclear matter: Mean-field and beyond
1 Department of Physics, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH, UK
2 Departament d’Estructura i Constituents de la Matèria and Institut de Ciències del Cosmos, Universitat de Barcelona, Avda. Diagonal 647, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain
3 Centro de Física Computacional, Department of Physics, University of Coimbra, PT-3004-516 Coimbra, Portugal
The liquid-gas phase transition in nuclear systems is a unique phenomenon, at the frontier of nuclear, many-body and statistical physics. We study this phase transition theoretically at the Hartree-Fock level and explore the available parameter space for the critical point by using several mean-field parametrizations. We find the latent heat of the transition and describe its temperature dependence from first principles. Using tools from many-body physics, we also describe the phase transition beyond the mean-field approximation and find a marked dependence on both the microscopic interaction and the many-body approximation scheme.
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences - SIF, 2012
