Data from a number of different experimental measurements have been used to construct caloric curves for five different regions of nuclear mass. These curves are qualitatively similar and exhibit plateaus at the higher excitation energies. The limiting temperatures represented by the plateaus decrease with increasing nuclear mass and are in very good agreement with results of recent calculations employing either a chiral symmetry model or the Gogny interaction. This agreement strongly favors a soft equation of state. Evidence is presented that critical excitation energies and critical temperatures for nuclei can be determined over a large mass range when the mass variations inherent in many caloric curve measurements are taken into account.Comment: In response to referees comments we have improved the discussion of the figures and added a new figure showing the relationship between the effective level density and the excitation energy. The discussion has been reordered and comments are made on recent data which support the hypothesis of a mass dependence of caloric curve

We discuss experimental evidence for a nuclear phase transition driven by the different concentration of neutrons to protons. Different ratios of the neutron to proton concentrations lead to different critical points for the phase transition. This is analogous to the phase transitions occurring in 4 He-3 He liquid mixtures. We present experimental results which reveal the N/A (or Z/A) dependence of the phase transition and discuss possible implications of these observations in terms of the Landau Free Energy description of critical phenomena.

Experimental analyses of moderate temperature nuclear gases produced in the violent collisions of 35 MeV/nucleon 64 Zn projectiles with 92 Mo and 197 Au target nuclei reveal a large degree of alpha particle clustering at low densities. For these gases, temperature and density dependent symmetry energy coefficients have been derived from isoscaling analyses of the yields of nuclei with A ≤ 4. At densities of 0.01 to 0.05 times the ground state density of symmetric nuclear matter, the temperature and density dependent symmetry energies range from 9.03 to 13.6 MeV. This is much larger than those obtained in mean field Calculations and reflects the clusterization of low density nuclear matter. He are expected to be small and they are ignored in the calculation. In the work reported in reference [1] these virial coefficients were then used to make predictions for a variety of properties of nuclear matter over a range of density, temperature and composition. The authors view this virial equation of state, derived from experimental observables, as modelindependent, and therefore a benchmark for all nuclear equations of state at low densities. Its importance in both nuclear physics and in the physics of the neutrino sphere in supernovae is discussed in the VEOS paper [1]. A particularly important feature of the VEOS, emphasized in reference [1], is the natural inclusion of clustering which leads to large symmetry energies at low baryon density.In this paper we extend our investigations of the nucleon and light cluster emission that occurs in near-Fermi energy heavy ion collisions [2,3,4,5,6] to investigate the properties of the low density participant matter produced in such collisions. The data provide experimental evidence for a large degree of alpha clustering in this low density matter, in agreement with theoretical predictions [1,7,8,9]. Temperature and density dependent symmetry free energies and symmetry energies have been determined at densities of 0.05ρ 0 or less, where ρ 0 is the ground state density of symmetric nuclear matter, by application of an isoscaling analysis [10,11]. The symmetry energy coefficient values obtained, 9.03 to 13.6 MeV, are much larger then those derived from effective interactions in mean field models. The values are in reasonable agreement with those calculated in the VEOS treatment of reference [1]. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURESThe reactions of 35A MeV 64 Zn projectiles with 92 Mo and 197 Au target nuclei were studied at the K-500 SuperConducting Cyclotron at Texas A&M University, using the 4π detector array NIMROD [3]. NIMROD consists of a 166 segment charged particle array set inside a neu-

The reactions 12 Cϩ 116 Sn, 22 NeϩAg, 40 Arϩ 100 Mo, and 64 Znϩ 89 Y have been studied at 47A MeV projectile energy. For these reactions the most violent collisions lead to increasing amounts of fragment and light particle emission as the projectile mass increases. This is consistent with quantum molecular dynamics ͑QMD͒ model simulations of the collisions. Moving source fits to the light charged particle data have been used to gain a global view of the evolution of the particle emission. Comparisons of the multiplicities and spectra of light charged particles emitted in the reactions with the four different projectiles indicate a common emission mechanism for early emitted ejectiles even though the deposited excitation energies differ greatly. The spectra for such ejectiles can be characterized as emission in the nucleon-nucleon frame. Evidence that the 3 He yield is dominated by this type of emission and the role of the collision dynamics in determining the 3 H/ 3 He yield ratio are discussed. Self-consistent coalescence model analyses are applied to the light cluster yields, in an attempt to probe emitter source sizes and to follow the evolution of the temperatures and densities from the time of first particle emission to equilibration. These analyses exploit correlations between ejectile energy and emission time, suggested by the QMD calculations. In this analysis the degree of expansion of the emitting system is found to increase with increasing projectile mass. The double isotope yield ratio temperature drops as the system expands. Average densities as low as 0.36 0 are reached at a time near 100 fm/c after contact. Calorimetric methods were used to derive the mass and excitation energy of the excited nuclei which are present after preequilibrium emission. The derived masses range from 102 to 116 u and the derived excitation energies increase from 2.6 to 6.9 MeV/nucleon with increasing projectile mass. A caloric curve is derived for these expanded Aϳ110 nuclei. This caloric curve exhibits a plateau at temperatures near 7 MeV. The plateau extends from ϳ3.5 to 6.9 MeV/nucleon excitation energy.PACS number͑s͒: 25.70.Mn, 24.10.Lx

Clustering in low density nuclear matter has been investigated using the NIMROD multidetector at Texas A&M University. Thermal coalescence modes were employed to extract densities, ρ, and temperatures, T, for evolving systems formed in collisions of 47A MeV (40)Ar+(112)Sn, (124)Sn and (64)Zn+(112)Sn, (124)Sn. The yields of d, t, (3)He, and (4)He have been determined at ρ=0.002 to 0.03 nucleons/fm(3) and T=5 to 11 MeV. The experimentally derived equilibrium constants for α particle production are compared with those predicted by a number of astrophysical equations of state. The data provide important new constraints on the model calculations.