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Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 1182 - 1185 (1998)

First-Order Phase Transition in Intermediate-Energy Heavy Ion Collisions

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Jicai Pan, Subal Das Gupta, and Martin Grant
Physics Department, McGill University, 3600 University Street, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3A 2T8

Received 5 May 1997

We model the disassembly of an excited nuclear system formed as a result of a heavy ion collision. We find that, as the beam energy in central collisions in varied, the dissociating system crosses a liquid-gas coexistence curve, resulting in a first-order phase transition. Accessible experimental signatures are identified: a peak in the specific heat, a power-law yield for composites, and a maximum in the second moment of the yield distribution.


©1998 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.80.1182
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.80.1182
PACS: 25.70.Pq, 21.65.+f, 24.10.Pa, 64.60.My

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