Signals for Nuclear Solid-Liquid Phase Transition in Clustering Nuclei
Abstract
The nuclear phase diagram remains a fundamental challenge, where uncovering how the cluster degree of freedom evolves with temperature and energy is essential to understand the intriguing crossover between cluster, nucleon, and nuclear astrophysics. A new first-order phase transition, the nuclear solid-liquid phase transition (SLPT), emerges spontaneously from nucleonic degrees of freedom in low-energy heavy-ion collisions. Clear signals of the SLPT are identified as a region of negative heat capacity in smaller systems (e.g., 12C + 12C and 16O + 12C) and a caloric plateau in larger systems (e.g., 28Si + 12C and 40Ca + 12C), along with prominent behaviors in the number of fragment species and information entropy. Moreover, the pairwise distance probability density function provides a direct spatial fingerprint of the melting, where long-range crystalline α-cluster peaks vanish above the transition temperature, giving way to a liquid-like distribution. This new phase transition unifies the many-body dynamics of finite constituents, extending from nanoscale clusters to nuclear systems. Beyond advancing nuclear structure and phase diagrams, these insights offer profound implications for astrophysics, notably linking structural evolution to astrophysical phase transitions via nuclear cluster dissolution in supernovae.
Related
- Imprints of the nuclear liquid-gas phase transition on net-baryon number fluctuations
- Density-Dependent Description of Clustering in Axially-Symmetric Nuclei
- Obtaining tensor-polarized nuclei with spin S≥1 via spin filtering upon nuclear beam transmission through an unpolarized target (spin dichroism effect)
- Constraining Nuclear Matter from Finite Nuclei: the Ab Initio Perspective
- Configuration-Interaction Studies of Alpha Clustering in Atomic Nuclei
BibTeX
@misc{cao2026signals,
title = {{Signals for Nuclear Solid-Liquid Phase Transition in Clustering Nuclei}},
author = {Xi-Guang Cao and Yong-Hao Jin and Chun-Wang Ma and Wen-Bo Liu and Yu-Gang Ma},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.05145},
eprint = {2609.05145},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.05145},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Signals for Nuclear Solid-Liquid Phase Transition in Clustering Nuclei
AU - Xi-Guang Cao
AU - Yong-Hao Jin
AU - Chun-Wang Ma
AU - Wen-Bo Liu
AU - Yu-Gang Ma
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/04
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.05145
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.05145
AB - The nuclear phase diagram remains a fundamental challenge, where uncovering how the cluster degree of freedom evolves with temperature and energy is essential to understand the intriguing crossover between cluster, nucleon, and nuclear astrophysics. A new first-order phase transition, the nuclear solid-liquid phase transition (SLPT), emerges spontaneously from nucleonic degrees of freedom in low-energy heavy-ion collisions. Clear signals of the SLPT are identified as a region of negative heat capacity in smaller systems (e.g., ^12C + ^12C and ^16O + ^12C) and a caloric plateau in larger systems (e.g., ^28Si + ^12C and ^40Ca + ^12C), along with prominent behaviors in the number of fragment species and information entropy. Moreover, the pairwise distance probability density function provides a direct spatial fingerprint of the melting, where long-range crystalline α-cluster peaks vanish above the transition temperature, giving way to a liquid-like distribution. This new phase transition unifies the many-body dynamics of finite constituents, extending from nanoscale clusters to nuclear systems. Beyond advancing nuclear structure and phase diagrams, these insights offer profound implications for astrophysics, notably linking structural evolution to astrophysical phase transitions via nuclear cluster dissolution in supernovae.
ER -