Liquid-gas phase transitions in finite nuclear matter

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Abstract
A procedure is developed to calculate the chemical potential of a system of fermions at high temperatures in the independent particle model. This is then used to investigate the occurrence of liquid-gas phase transitions in finite nuclei employing various zero-range nuclear effective interactions. Finite size effects and the Coulomb force are found to lead to a sizeable reduction (∼8 MeV) in the "critical" temperature as compared to the case of infinite nuclear matter.