Thermodynamic instabilities in hot and dense nuclear matter

Abstract

We study the presence of thermodynamic instabilities in a hot and dense nuclear medium where a nuclear phase transition can take place. Similarly to the low density nuclear liquid-gas phase transition, we show that such a phase transition is characterized by pure hadronic matter with both mechanical instability (fluctuations on the baryon density) that by chemical-diffusive instability (fluctuations on the strangeness concentration). The analysis is performed by requiring the global conservation of baryon number and zero net strangeness in the framework of an effective relativistic mean field theory with the inclusion of the Δ(1232)-isobars, hyperons and the lightest pseudoscalar and vector meson degrees of freedom. It turns out that in this situation hadronic phases with different values of strangeness content may coexist, altering significantly meson-antimeson ratios.