Thermodynamic consistency of the equation of state of strongly interacting matter

2004

Addressing strongly interacting matter in the region of energy density where the hadronic gas phase coexists with the quark-gluon plasma phase, we discuss how thermodynamic consistency can be used to constrain the equation of state for uniform matter and we illustrate the method by constructing a T{sub c}-dependent family of thermodynamically consistent equations of state based on simple spline interpolations between the gas and plasma phases.