Recent results for the two-loop thermodynamic potential of QCD at finite density have shown that nonzero quark mass corrections to the pressure are relevant and can dramatically affect the structure of compact stars. Motivated by these findings, we consider a simple toy model - cold and dense Yukawa theory - to study the effects of finite fermion masses on the pressure. The role of renormalization group running of the coupling and mass is also discussed. Results within this simple model might be useful in the description of condensates in the core of neutron stars.

We present a construction of an effective Yang-Mills action for QCD, from the expansion of the fermionic determinant in terms of powers of the chemical potential at high temperature for the case of massless quarks. We analyze this expansion in the perturbative region and find that it gives extra spurious information. We propose for the non-perturbative sector a simplified effective action which, in principle, contains only the relevant information.

We construct an effective model for the chiral field and the Polyakov loop in which we can investigate the interplay between the approximate chiral symmetry restoration and the deconfinement of color in a thermal SU(3) gauge theory with three flavors of massive quarks. The phenomenological couplings between these two sectors can then be related to the recent lattice data on the renormalized Polyakov loop and the chiral condensate close to the critical region.

We investigate the onset of spinodal decomposition in a relativistic fluid of quarks coupled to a nonequilibrium chiral condensate. Studying small fluctuations around equilibrium, we identify the role played by sound and chiral waves in the generation of unstable modes.