Equation of state for hot nuclear matter

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Abstract
The authors develop an equation of state for hot nuclear matter by considering the hot nucleus as a mixture of fermions (nucleons and nuclear resonances) and bosons (pions). The several phases are treated as a relativistic quantum gas with a density-dependent internal interaction. The mixture is assumed to be in chemical equilibrium; from this assumption they derive the chemical potentials of all phases and calculate the thermodynamical functions. For the internal interaction several models are tested, some of them including a second minimum for the binding energy of nuclear matter at higher densities. It is shown that such a second minimum may lead to a phase transition, where nuclear matter changes from a mainly nucleonic state to a system consisting mostly of nucleon resonances.