Abstract
The chapter reviews properties of an ideal gas of quarks and gluons in thermal equilibrium, and the phase transition between the quark-gluon plasma and the hadronic world. A nuclear matter phase diagram for two massless light quarks and a heavy strange quark is analyzed in the chapter. The quark matter phase can be reached either by compressing nuclear matter to high densities at rather low temperatures or by heating the vacuum. The high density phases are expected to play a key role in the interior of neutron stars, including keeping the interior temperature elevated for a longer time than expected. The location of the endpoint and whether the region to the left of the endpoint has a second-order transition or a smooth crossover depends on the masses of the up, down, and strange quarks. Phase transitions in nuclear matter involve symmetries. The number of quark degrees of freedom depends on the number of active quarks in a system. The total partition function for a system of massless fermions and boson is also elaborated in the chapter.
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