Plasma phase transition in dense hydrogen and electron–hole plasmas

Plasma phase transitions in dense hydrogen and electron–hole plasmas are investigated by direct path integral Monte Carlo methods. The phase boundary of the electron–hole liquid in germanium is calculated and is found to agree reasonably well with the known experimental results. Analogous behaviour is found for high-density hydrogen. For a temperature of T = 10 000 K it is shown that the internal energy is lowered due to droplet formation for densities between 10 23 cm −3 and 10 24 cm −3 .