Nucleation theory based on the steady-state solution of Fokker-Plank kinetic equation is applied to study of the liquid-gas phase transition in nuclear matter. Theoretical predictions are compared with the parameters extracted from the analysis of the charge distributions of fragments in heavy ion collisions at intermediate energies. The phenomenological droplet model is shown to be able to explain both the characteristic power-law falloff and the long tail of the yields of light and heavy nuclear fragments correspondingly. It is shown that the traditional equilibrium approach to the analysis of the multifragmentation data leads to significant overestimation of the parameters of nuclear equation of state.

• Received 31 May 1995

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.52.2608