Phase transition in dense nuclear matter with quark and gluon condensates

Abstract

Nuclear matter is expected to modify the expectation values of the quark and gluon condensates. We utilize the chiral and scale symmetries of QCD to describe the interaction between these condensates and hadrons. We solve the resulting equations self-consistently in the relativistic mean field approximation. In order that these QCD condensates be driven towards zero at high density their coupling to sigma and vector mesons must be such that the masses of these mesons do not decrease with density. In this case a physically sensible phase transition to quark matter ensues.