# Composition of nuclear matter with light clusters and Bose-Einstein condensation of $\alpha$ particles

## TL;DR

This paper investigates the conditions under which alpha particles form a Bose-Einstein condensate in warm nuclear matter, considering the effects of additional nuclei like iron-56 on the condensation process.

## Contribution

It introduces a model to analyze alpha condensation in nuclear matter with light clusters and heavy nuclei, revealing suppression effects due to iron-56 inclusion.

## Key findings

- Alpha particles can condense at temperatures below 2 MeV in dilute nuclear matter.
- The presence of iron-56 nuclei significantly alters cluster abundances.
- Adding iron-56 suppresses alpha particle Bose-Einstein condensation at low temperatures.

## Abstract

The Bose-Einstein condensation of $\alpha$ partciles in the multicomponent environment of dilute, warm nuclear matter is studied. We consider the cases of matter composed of light clusters with mass numbers $A\leq 4$ and matter that in addition these clusters contains $\isotope[56]{Fe}$ nuclei. We apply the quasiparticle gas model which treats clusters as bound states with infinite life-time and binding energies independent of temperature and density. We show that the $\alpha$ particles can form a condensate at low temperature $T\le 2$ MeV in such matter in the first case. When the $\isotope[56]{Fe}$ nucleus is added to the composition the cluster abundances are strongly modified at low temperatures, with an important implication that the $\alpha$ condensation at these temperatures is suppressed.