On the Manifestation of Chiral Symmetry in Nuclei and Dense Nuclear Matter

Abstract

This article reviews our view on how chiral symmetry, its pattern of breaking and restoration under extreme conditions manifest themselves in the nucleon, nuclei, nuclear matter and dense hadronic matter. Topics treated are nucleon structure in terms of chiral symmetry, "first-principle" (QCD) calculations of the properties of finite nuclei effectuated by embedding the ``standard nuclear physics approach" into the framework of effective field theories of nuclei with predictions for certain astrophysical processes, a reinterpretation of the Brown-Rho (BR) scaling that implements chiral symmetry property of baryon-rich medium à la "vector manifestation" of hidden local symmetry, evidences for BR scaling in nuclear processes at normal nuclear matter density and at higher density, the notion of "broadband equilibration" in heavy-ion processes, and the role of strangeness in the formation of compact stars and their collapse into black-holes. We revisit the "Cheshire-Cat phenomenon" recently revived in the form of "quark-hadron continuity" in mapping low-density structure of hadrons to high-density structure of quarks and gluons and suggest how color-flavor locking in terms of QCD variables and hidden local symmetry in terms of hadronic variables may be connected and how BR scaling could fit into this "continuity" scheme.