Description of a nucleon in nuclear matter using the chiral bag model

The chiral bag (cloudy bag) model, which contains an essentially nonlinear interaction of quarks with both the classical and quantum pion field, is extended for description of a nucleon in nuclear matter. The dependence on the density and temperature of the medium is studied. The pion field in nuclear matter differs considerably from the free field, and this leads to a modification of the nucleon bag. Increase of the density ρ and temperature T causes strengthening of the pion field and growth of its thermodynamic fluctuations. At sufficiently high densities ρ approx-gt ρCB and temperatures T≥Tcr this leads to instability of the three-quark nucleon bag. Under such conditions nuclear matter cannot be composed only of nucleons, and one should expect the appearance of a different, non-nucleon, phase. Estimates of the critical density and temperature are obtained: ρCB ∼ (1.5-2)ρ0 and Tcr ∼ 200 MeV (where ρ0 is the conventional nuclear density)