Signals for Nuclear Solid-Liquid Phase Transition in Clustering Nuclei

Abstract: The nuclear phase diagram remains a fundamental challenge, where uncovering how the cluster degree of freedom evolves with temperature and energy is essential to understand the intriguing crossover between cluster, nucleon, and nuclear astrophysics. A new first-order phase transition, the nuclear solid-liquid phase transition (SLPT), emerges spontaneously from nucleonic degrees of freedom in low-energy heavy-ion collisions. Clear signals of the SLPT are identified as a region of negative heat capacity in smaller systems (e.g., $^{12}\text{C} + <sup>{12}\text{C}$ and $^{16}\text{O} + <sup>{12}\text{C}$) and a caloric plateau in larger systems (e.g., $^{{28}\text{Si}} + <sup>{12}\text{C}$ and $^{{40}\text{Ca}} + <sup>{12}\text{C}$), along with prominent behaviors in the number of fragment species and information entropy. Moreover, the pairwise distance probability density function provides a direct spatial fingerprint of the melting, where long-range crystalline $α$-cluster peaks vanish above the transition temperature, giving way to a liquid-like distribution. This new phase transition unifies the many-body dynamics of finite constituents, extending from nanoscale clusters to nuclear systems. Beyond advancing nuclear structure and phase diagrams, these insights offer profound implications for astrophysics, notably linking structural evolution to astrophysical phase transitions via nuclear cluster dissolution in supernovae.