Describing Hot and Dense Nuclear Matter with Gauged Linear sigma-Model

To describe nuclear matter at high temperature and high baryon density appropriate for RHIC and LHC, an effective theory is proposed. Three developments underlie the effective theory: (1) relativistic mean field theory description of nuclear matter with mesons mediating interactions; (2) topological soliton description of the nucleon with hidden local symmetry; (3) phenomenological knowledge of nucleon-nucleon interaction and nucleon structure obtained from elastic NN scattering at c.m. energies of hundreds of GeV. When these developments are combined together, a gauged linear sigma-model with anomalous action and condensed quark-antiquark ground state emerges as the effective theory.