Nuclear first order phase transition associated with Helmholtz free   energy of canonical ensemble
  It was shown that in the canonical ensemble the simple exactly soluble statistical model of nuclei decay into nucleons, which is a limiting case of the statistical multifragmentation model, predicts the nuclear first order phase transition associated with the Helmholtz free energy different from the first order phase transition of the liquid-gas type associated with the Gibbs free energy. The main thermodynamic properties of this phase transition were explored on the basis of the method of the thermodynamic potential and its first and second derivatives in the thermodynamic limit. It was established that the thermodynamic potential $F$ is a piecewise smooth function and its first order partial derivatives with respect to variables of state are piecewise continuous functions. At the points of phase transition, the energy in the caloric curve is discontinuous at the constant temperature and fixed values of the specific volume, while the pressure and the chemical potential in the equations of state are discontinuous at the constant specific volume and fixed values of the temperature. 
A. S. Parvan
nucl-th cond-mat.stat-mech hep-ph