Author Description

This is the sequel to the first volume to treat in one effective field theory framework the physics of strongly interacting matter under extreme conditions. This is vital for understanding the high temperature phenomena taking place in relativistic heavy ion collisions and in the early Universe, as well as the high-density matter predicted to be present in compact stars. The underlying thesis is that what governs hadronic properties in a heat bath and/or a dense medium is hidden local symmetry which emerges from chiral dynamics of light quark systems and from the duality between QCD in 4D and bulk gravity in 5D as in AdS/QCD. Special attention is paid to hot matter relevant for relativistic heavy ion processes and to dense matter relevant for compact stars that are either stable or on the verge of collapse into black holes.