MULTI-COMPONENT VAN DER WAALS INTERACTION NEAR LIQUID GAS PHASE TRANSITION OF NUCLEAR MATTER

The ideal Hadron Resonance gas model describes the interaction between ground state hadrons in terms of the production of heavier resonances. At higher chemical potential, the density of the particles is so large that additional interaction terms need to be included. We extend the ideal HRG model to include Van der Waals (VdW) terms, which contain both attractive and repulsive interactions. The VdW HRG model predicts a liquid gas phase transition at densities around the nuclear saturation density. I am extending the model to include other interactions such as the meson-(anti)baryon and meson-meson interactions near the liquid gas phase transition, to quantify how they would modify the equation of state, with a particular focus on the predicted liquid-gas phase transition.