QCD Phenomenology based on a Chiral Effective Lagrangian

We review the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) approach to the dynamical breaking of chiral symmetry in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). The subjects treated in Part I include the vacuum structure of QCD, mass spectra and coupling constants of hadrons, flavor mixing in mesons, the violation of the OZI rule in baryons, and the validity of the chiral perturbation in QCD. A subtle interplay between the axial anomaly and the current-quark masses is shown to play important roles, and a realistic evaluation of the strangeness and heavy quark contents of hadrons is given. In Part II, the NJL model is applied to the system at finite temperature ($T$) and density ($\rho$) relevant to the early universe, interior of the neutron stars and the ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. The subjects treated here include the quark condensates in the medium, meson properties at finite $T$ ($\rho$) and their experimental implications. A special attention is paid to fluctuation phenomena near the critical temperature. (to be published in Physics Reports)