Effect of liquid drop model parameters on nuclear liquid-gas phase transition

The phenomenon of liquid-gas phase transition occurring in heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies is a subject of contemporary interest. In statistical models of fragmentation, the liquid drop model is generally used to calculate the ground-state binding energies of the fragments. It is well known that the surface and symmetry energy of the hot fragments at the low-density freeze-out can be considerably modified. In addition to this, the level-density parameter also has a wide variation. The effect of variation of these parameters is studied on fragmentation observables which are related to the nuclear liquid-gas phase transition. The canonical thermodynamical model which has been very successful in describing the phenomenon of fragmentation is used for the study. The shift in transition temperature owing to the variation in liquid drop model parameters has been examined.