Liquid-gas phase transition in hot asymmetric nuclear matter with density-dependent relativistic mean-field models

TL;DR

This study investigates the liquid-gas phase transition in hot asymmetric nuclear matter using density-dependent relativistic mean-field models, revealing how the symmetry energy influences phase boundaries and critical temperatures.

Contribution

It introduces a density-dependent relativistic mean-field model constrained by empirical data to analyze phase transitions in nuclear matter, highlighting the role of symmetry energy.

Findings

Critical temperature in symmetric matter is 15.7 MeV.

Phase-coexistence boundary is sensitive to symmetry energy.

Softer symmetry energy increases critical pressure and temperature.

Abstract

The liquid-gas phase transition in hot asymmetric nuclear matter is studied within density-dependent relativistic mean-field models where the density dependence is introduced according to the Brown-Rho scaling and constrained by available data at low densities and empirical properties of nuclear matter. The critical temperature of the liquid-gas phase transition is obtained to be 15.7 MeV in symmetric nuclear matter falling on the lower edge of the small experimental error bars. In hot asymmetric matter, the boundary of the phase-coexistence region is found to be sensitive to the density dependence of the symmetry energy. The critical pressure and the area of phase-coexistence region increases clearly with the softening of the symmetry energy. The critical temperature of hot asymmetric matter separating the gas phase from the LG coexistence phase is found to be higher for the softer symmetry energy.