Liquid-gas phase transition in strange hadronic matter

Abstract

The liquid-gas phase transition in strange hadronic matter is studied utilizing an extended Furnstahl-Serot-Tang model with nucleons and hyperons. The system is treated as of two components. The phase transition is analyzed by investigating the stability of the system and Gibbs conditions for phase equilibrium. A two-dimensional binodal surface resulted from the two-phase equilibrium, namely the phase boundary, is obtained. For each temperature ranging from T = 8 MeV to T = 12 MeV, a limit pressure on the binodal surface section is found, while a critical point is spotted for the temperature around T = 13 MeV. The Maxwell constructions are also illustrated to give a vivid description of the course of the phase transition. Moreover, the entropy per baryon and heat capacity per baryon as functions of temperature are examined. The entropy is continuous during the phase transition but the heat capacity is discontinuous, indicating that the phase transition is of second order. By these efforts, the L-G phase transition can be concluded to exist in the strange hadronic matter.