Eur. Phys. J. A (2014) 50: 35
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2014-14035-8

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

How much cooler would it be with some more neutrons?

Exploring the asymmetry dependence of the nuclear caloric curve and the liquid-gas phase transition

¹ Cyclotron Institute, Texas A&M University, 77843, College Station, Texas, USA
² Laboratori Nazionali del Sud, INFN, I-95123, Catania, Italy
³ Chemistry Department, Texas A&M University, 77843, College Station, Texas, USA
⁴ National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and Department of Chemistry, Michigan State University, 48824, East Lansing, Michigan, USA
⁵ GANIL, Bd Henri Becquerel, BP 55027-14076, CAEN Cedex 05, France
⁶ Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, GR-15771, Athens, Greece
⁷ Physics Department, Texas A&M University, 77843, College Station, Texas, USA

^* e-mail: amcintosh@comp.tamu.edu

Received: 20 July 2013
Revised: 9 October 2013
Accepted: 14 October 2013
Published online: 26 February 2014

Abstract

Despite the long-standing interest in the symmetry energy by the nuclear physics community, much work remains to characterize the equation of state away from the valley of stability and normal density. Although the correlations between the thermodynamic properties (temperature, density, pressure) has been explored, the dependence of these correlations on the neutron-proton asymmetry has only recently been probed experimentally. In this work, we provide evidence for the asymmetry dependence of the nuclear caloric curve using multiple independent probes. Correlations between the temperature, density and pressure when normalized to their critical values exhibit scaling, allowing extraction of the critical point. The location of the critical point shows a dependence on the neutron-proton asymmetry.