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Phys. Rev. D 60, 074014 (1999) [7 pages]

Quark description of hadronic phases

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Thomas Schäfer* and Frank Wilczek
School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

Received 8 April 1999; published 7 September 1999

We extend our proposal that major universality classes of hadronic matter can be understood, and in favorable cases calculated, directly in the microscopic quark variables, to allow for a splitting between strange and light quark masses. A surprisingly simple but apparently viable picture emerges, featuring essentially three phases, distinguished by whether strangeness is conserved (standard nuclear matter), conserved modulo 2 (hypernuclear matter), or locked to color (color flavor locking). These are separated by sharp phase transitions. There is also, potentially, a quark phase matching hadronic K condensation. The smallness of the secondary gap in two-flavor color superconductivity corresponds to the disparity between the primary dynamical energy scales of QCD and the much smaller energy scales of nuclear physics.

© 1999 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.60.074014
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.60.074014
PACS:
12.38.Aw, 21.65.+f

*Email address: schaefer@sns.ias.edu

Email address: wilczek@sns.ias.edu