Abstract
We calculate the ground-state energy of a quark gas up to and including effecs of fourth order in the quark-gluon coupling. Renormalization-group techniques are used to rewrite the results of the fourth-order calculation in terms of a chemical-potential-dependent coupling. The chemical-potential-dependent coupling approaches zero at high densities. We argue that at hadronic matter densities a phase transition between quark matter and hadronic matter occurs. We show the existence of this phase transition for a three-color, one-flavor quark gas. We find a close correspondence between the results of quantum chromodynamics at large coupling with no bag constant and quantum chromodynamics at small coupling with a bag constant.
- Received 12 November 1976
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.16.1169
©1977 American Physical Society