Quark description of hadronic phases

Abstract

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.