Experimental Evidence for a Liquid-Gas Phase Transition in Nuclear Systems

Abstract

At certain combinations of temperature and density, nuclear matter may exist as a liquid-gas mixture exhibiting phase instabilities, a characteristic signature of which may be found in the emission of intermediate-mass fragments in nuclear collisions. The present analysis of fragment distributions from proton- and heavy-ion-induced reactions, in the framework of a theory of condensation, is suggestive of the occurrence of such phase transitions with a critical exponent $k\ensuremath{\sim}1.7$ and a critical temperature ${T}_{c}\ensuremath{\sim}12$ MeV.