The equation of state and phase diagram of strongly interacting matter composed of $\alpha$ particles are studied in the mean-field approximation. The particle interactions are included via a Skyrme-like mean field, containing both attractive and repulsive terms. The model parameters are found by fitting known values of binding energy and baryon density in the ground state of $\alpha$ matter, obtained from microscopic calculations by Clark and Wang. Thermodynamic quantities of $\alpha$ matter are calculated in the broad domains of temperature and baryon density, which can be reached in heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies. The model predicts both first-order liquid-gas phase transition and Bose-Einstein condensation of $\alpha$ particles. We present the profiles of scaled variance, sound velocity and isochoric heat capacity along the isentropic trajectories of $\alpha$ matter. Strong density fluctuations are predicted in the vicinity of the critical point at temperature $T_c\approx 14~\textrm{ MeV}$ and density $n_c\approx 0.012~\textrm{ fm}^{ -3}$.
Categories: nucl-th hep-ph