Van der Waals Equation of State with Fermi Statistics for Nuclear Matter

2015/04/30 by V. Vovchenko, D. V. Anchishkin, M. I. Gorenstein · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #nucl-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevc.91.064314

published as Phys. Rev. C 91, 064314 (2015) · 20 pages, 5 figures, minor changes to match published version

arxiv created 2015/06/26 · arxiv updated 2015/06/29

Abstract

The van der Waals (VDW) equation of state is a simple and popular model to describe the pressure function in equilibrium systems of particles with both repulsive and attractive interactions. This equation predicts an existence of a first-order liquid-gas phase transition and contains a critical point. Two steps to extend the VDW equation and make it appropriate for new physical applications are carried out in this paper: 1) the grand canonical ensemble formulation; 2) an inclusion of the quantum statistics. The VDW equation with Fermi statistics is then applied to a description of the system of interacting nucleons. The VDW parameters a and b are fixed to reproduce the properties of nuclear matter at saturation density n₀=0.16 fm^-3 and zero temperature. The model predicts a location of the critical point for the symmetric nuclear matter at temperature T_c≅ 19.7 MeV and nucleon number density n_c ≅ 0.07 fm^-3.

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