Münster 2002 – scientific programme

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HK: Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 36: Plenary Session

HK 36.1: Plenary Talk

Thursday, March 14, 2002, 11:00–11:45, Plenarsaal

Chiral Symmetry and the Medium Modifiaction of Hadrons — •Jochen Wambach — IKP TU-Darmstadt

A fundamental question in strong interaction physics is how mass is generated in the sector of light quarks. The answer lies in the non-perturbative structure of the QCD vacuum itself in which quarks and gluons condense. This is in marked contrast to the heavy-quark sector where the masses of the hadrons are determined by the quark masses themselves. When nuclear matter is subjected to extreme conditions in density and temperature such as in the interior of neutron stars or in central relativistic heavy-ion collisions, the QCD vacuum will be altered, eventually leading to the liberation of the elementary constituents in a new state of matter. Such a restructuring of the vacuum must be accompanied by significant changes in the spectral properties of hadrons. In the framework of effective field theory this relationship and observable consequences for the meson spectrum will be addressed.