The phase diagram of nuclear and quark matter at high baryon density

Understand

We review theoretical approaches to explore the phase diagram of nuclear and quark matter at high baryon density.

• We first look over the basic properties of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and address how to describe various states of QCD matter.
• In our discussions on nuclear matter we cover the relativistic mean-field model, the chiral perturbation theory, and the approximation based on the large-Nc limit where Nc is the number of colors.
• We then explain the liquid-gas phase transition and the inhomogeneous meson condensation in nuclear matter with emphasis put on the relevance to quark matter.