Isospin effect on the liquid-gas phase transition for finite nuclei

Abstract

The phenomenon of nuclear liquid-gas phase transition is a topic of contemporary interest. In heavy-ion collisions, there is no direct way of accessing the thermodynamic variables like pressure, density, free energy, entropy etc., and unambiguous detection of phase transition becomes difficult. A peak in the first order derivative of total multiplicity with respect to temperature (commonly abbreviated as the multiplicity derivative) has been established as a new experimentally accessible signature of the nuclear liquid-gas phase transition. In this work, the effect of isospin asymmetry in the fragmenting system, as well as the nuclear equation of state, on the multiplicity derivative and specific heat at constant volume is investigated within the framework of the Canonical Thermodynamical Model (CTM) with a semi-microscopic cluster functional.