Nuclear liquid-gas phase transition within the lattice gas model

We study the nuclear liquid-gas phase transition on the basis of a two-component lattice gas model. A Metropolis type of sampling method is used to generate microscopic states in the canonical ensemble. The effective equation of state and fragment mass distributions are evaluated in a wide range of temperatures and densities. A definition of the phase coexistence region appropriate for mesoscopic systems is proposed. The caloric curve resulting from different types of freeze-out conditions are presented. It is commonly believed that nuclear matter undergoes a liquid-gas phase transition at lower densities and temperatures. In the early 1980s it was suggested [1] that this phase transition might be probed in heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies by observing the disintegration of colliding nuclei into many fragments of different sizes, a phenomenon commonly known as multifragmentation. A wide variety of models has been proposed for nuclear multifragmentation, ranging from statistical to dynamical ones (see e.g. [2] for a review). In principle, most of these models yield an equation of state of nuclear matter. The evaluation of the equation