Equation of State of Structured Matter at Finite Temperature

TL;DR

This paper studies the equation of state of nuclear matter during first-order phase transitions, focusing on the impact of finite-size effects, charge screening, and surface tension on the mixed phase structures and thermodynamic properties.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of how charge screening and surface tension influence the EOS of mixed phases in nuclear matter at finite temperature.

Findings

Charge screening and surface tension make the EOS similar to Maxwell construction.

Finite-size effects significantly alter the phase transition characteristics.

Thermal effects are also examined in the context of mixed phases.

Abstract

We investigate the properties of nuclear matter at the first-order phase transitions such as liquid-gas phase transition and hadron-quark phase transition. As a general feature of the first-order phase transitions of matter consisting of many species of charged particles, there appears a mixed phases with geometrical structures called ``pasta'' due to the balance of the Coulomb repulsion and the surface tension between two phases. The equation of state (EOS) of mixed phase is different from the one obtained by a bulk application of the Gibbs conditions or by the Maxwell construction due to the effects of the non-uniform structure. We show that the charge screening and strong surface tension make the EOS close to that of the Maxwell construction. The thermal effects are elucidated as well as the above finite-size effects.