Physical model of the vapor-liquid (insulator-metal) transition in an exciton gas

Abstract

We propose a simple physical model describing the transition of an exciton gas to a conducting exciton liquid. The transition occurs due to cohesive coupling of excitons in the vicinity of the critical point, which is associated with transformation of the exciton ground state to the conduction band and the emergence of conduction electrons. We calculate the cohesion binding energy for the exciton gas and, using it, derive the equations of state, critical parameters, and binodal. The computational method is analogous to that used by us earlier [5] for predicting the vapor-liquid (insulator-metal) phase transition in atomic (hypothetical, free of molecules) hydrogen and alkali metal vapors. The similarity of the methods used for hydrogen and excitons makes it possible to clarify the physical nature of the transition in the exciton gas and to predict more confidently the existence of a new phase transition in atomic hydrogen.