Van der Waals Equation of State with Fermi Statistics for Nuclear Matter

Understand

The van der Waals (VDW) equation of state is a simple and popular model to describe the pressure function in equilibrium systems of particles with both repulsive and attractive interactions.

• This equation predicts an existence of a first-order liquid-gas phase transition and contains a critical point.
• Two steps to extend the VDW equation and make it appropriate for new physical applications are carried out in this paper: 1) the grand canonical ensemble formulation; 2) an inclusion of the quantum statistics.
• The VDW equation with Fermi statistics is then applied to a description of the system of interacting nucleons.