2003/11/30 by Gentaro Watanabe, Katsuhiko Sato, Kenji Yasuoka +1 · 55 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Nuclear matter #Nuclear physics #Nuclear physics research studies #Nucleon #Phase (matter) #Physics #Proton #Quantum mechanics #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #astro-ph #cond-mat #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevc.69.055805
published in Physical Review C 69(5) (American Institute of Physics) · 13 pages, 19 figures; Eq. (14) corrected
openalex publication_date 2004/05/17 · arxiv created 2010/03/11 · arxiv updated 2014/11/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/21
Structure of hot dense matter at subnuclear densities is investigated by quantum molecular dynamics (QMD) simulations. We analyze nucleon distributions and nuclear shapes using two-point correlation functions and Minkowski functionals to determine the phase-separation line and to classify the phase of nuclear matter in terms of the nuclear structure. Obtained phase diagrams show that the density of the phase boundaries between the different nuclear structures decreases with increasing temperature due to the thermal expansion of nuclear matter region. The critical temperature for the phase separation is \ensuremath\gtrsim6\phantom\rule0.3em0exMeV for the proton fraction x=0.5 and \ensuremath\gtrsim5\phantom\rule0.3em0exMeV for x=0.3. Our result suggests the existence of ``spongelike'' phases with negative Euler characteristic in addition to the simple ``pasta'' phases in supernova cores until T\ensuremath\lesssim3\phantom\rule0.3em0exMeV.