Determination of the coexistence curve, critical temperature, density, and pressure of bulk nuclear matter from fragment emission data

An analysis of six different sets of experimental data indicates that infinite, neutron-proton symmetric, neutral nuclear matter has a critical temperature of $T_c=17.9\pm 0.4$ MeV, a critical density of ${\rho }_c=0.06\pm 0.01$ nucleons/fm${}^3$, and a critical pressure of $p_c=0.31\pm 0.07$ MeV/fm${}^3$. These values have been obtained by analyzing data from six different reactions studied in three experiments: two “compound nuclear” reactions, ${}^{58}\mathrm{Ni}{+}^{12}\mathrm{C}{\to }^{70}$Se and ${}^{64}\mathrm{Ni}{+}^{12}\mathrm{C}{\to }^{76}$Se (both performed at the LBNL 88-in. cyclotron); and four “multifragmentation” reactions, 1 GeV/$c$ $\pi {+}^{197}$Au (performed by the Indiana Silicon Sphere Collaboration), 1 GeV/nucleon ${}^{197}\mathrm{Au}{+}^{12}$C, 1 GeV/nucleon ${}^{139}\mathrm{La}{+}^{12}$C, and 1 GeV/nucleon ${}^{84}\mathrm{Kr}{+}^{12}$C (all performed by the Equation of State Collaboration). The charge yields of all reactions as a function of the excitation energy were fit with a version of Fisher's droplet model modified to account for the dual components of the fluid (i.e., protons and neutrons), Coulomb effects, finite-size effects, and angular momentum arising from the nuclear collisions.