Determination of the Equation of State of Dense Matter
Pawe
Danielewicz,12
Roy Lacey,3
William G. Lynch1*
Nuclear collisions can compress nuclear matter to
densities achieved within neutron stars and within core-collapse
supernovae. These dense states of matter exist momentarily before
expanding. We analyzed the flow of matter to extract pressures in
excess of 1034 pascals, the highest recorded under
laboratory-controlled conditions. Using these analyses, we rule out
strongly repulsive nuclear equations of state from relativistic mean
field theory and weakly repulsive equations of state with phase
transitions at densities less than three times that of stable nuclei,
but not equations of state softened at higher densities because of a
transformation to quark matter.
1 National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory
and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University,
East Lansing, MI 48824-1321, USA.
2 Gesellschaft
für Schwerionenforschung, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany.
3 Department of Chemistry, State University of New
York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3400, USA.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
lynch{at}nscl.msu.edu
