Quark description of hadronic phases

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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.
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