Critical parameters of the liquid-gas phase transition in thermal symmetric and asymmetric nuclear matter

Abstract

The properties of critical parameters and phase diagram structure of liquid-gas phase transition are investigated in thermal symmetric and asymmetric nuclear matter with the covariant density functional (CDF) theory. Although uncertainty remains in predicting the critical parameters such as the critical temperature and pressure from various CDF functionals, several correlations are explored numerically and verified to be approximately linear between them. These correlations become worse when nuclear matter is more isospin asymmetric, resulting mainly from the effects induced by symmetry energy. By looking over the isospin dependence of the critical temperature, the role of the symmetry energy in LG transition properties of asymmetric matter is realized. The change of critical temperature with isospin asymmetry is found to be correlated well with and as a consequence could be constrained by the density slope of symmetry energy at saturation density. Then, the structure of phase diagram of thermal nuclear matter is analyzed carefully. It is revealed that the contribution from symmetry energy dominates the size of liquid-gas phase coexistence area. Moreover, the specific pattern of the phase diagram could be determined by the critical temperature at non-zero isospin asymmetry, illustrated from the correlations of the temperature with pressures at several characteristic points, paving the possible way to further explore the structure of liquid-gas phase diagram of thermal nuclear matter.