Chiral-symmetry restoration in clustered hadronic matter

Chiral-symmetry restoration is usually discussed in the context of quark matter, a system of deconfined quarks. However, many systems like stable nuclei and neutron stars have quarks confined within nucleons. In the present paper we use a Fermi sea of three-quark clusters instead of a Fermi sea of deconfined quarks to investigate the in-medium quark condensate. We find that an enhancement of the chiral breaking in clustered matter as claimed in the literature is not a consequence of the clustering but rather dependent on the microscopic model dynamics.Received: 30 September 2002, Published online: 22 October 2003PACS: 21.65. + f Nuclear matter - 24.85. + p Quarks, gluons, and QCD in nuclei and nuclear processes - 12.39.-x Phenomenological quark models