Do phase transitions survive binomial reducibility and thermal scaling?

First order phase transitions are described in terms of the microcanonical and canonical ensemble, with special attention to finite size effects. Difficulties in interpreting a "caloric curve" are discussed. A robust parameter indicating phase coexistence (univariance) or single phase (bivariance) is extracted for charge distributions.Comment: 10 pages, TeX type, psfig, also available at http://csa5.lbl.gov/moretto/ps/lgm.ps, to appear in the Proceedings of the 1st Catania Relativistic Ion Studies: Critical Phenomena and Collective Observables, Acicastello, May 27-31, 199

The resistible effects of Coulomb interaction on nucleus-vapor phase coexistence

We explore the effects of Coulomb interaction upon the nuclear liquid vapor phase transition. Because large nuclei (A>60) are metastable objects, phases, phase coexistence, and phase transitions cannot be defined with any generality and the analogy to liquid vapor is ill-posed for these heavy systems. However, it is possible to account for the Coulomb interaction in the decay rates and obtain the coexistence phase diagram for the corresponding uncharged system.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure