Liquid-gas phase transitions in finite nuclear matter

Abstract

A procedure is developed to calculate the chemical potential of a system of fermions at high temperatures in the independent particle model. This is then used to investigate the occurrence of liquid-gas phase transitions in finite nuclei employing various zero-range nuclear effective interactions. Finite size effects and the Coulomb force are found to lead to a sizeable reduction (\ensuremath{\sim}8 MeV) in the "critical" temperature as compared to the case of infinite nuclear matter.