Facilities and Methods: Dielectron Spectrometry with Hades

Abstract

The study of hot and dense nuclear matter by means of relativistic heavy ion collisions is nowadays one of the main topics of heavy ion physics. As the incident kinetic energy increases well above the Coulomb barrier, the nuclear shell structure becomes less and less relevant; up to 30 A MeV, collective states of nuclei still play an important role. Beyond the Fermi energy, the scenario evolves toward nuclear matter dynamics (Figure 1). Within such a scenario we try to understand the nuclear matter behavior in terms of an equation of state that, connecting variables such as pressure, temperature, and density could provide an explanation to the multi-fragmentation of the colliding nuclei as a liquid-gas phase transition.