Quark droplets with chiral symmetry in the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model

Abstract

We discuss the stability of strangelets by considering dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. For quark droplets of finite volume, we formulate the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model with a basis set of the quark wave functions in the chiral bag model. Chiral symmetry breaking for the finite volume bag is discussed in a mean field approximation. Effects of the pion cloud including the chiral Casimir effect are investigated. Physical quantities of the quark droplets such as masses and radii are obtained for quark droplets of baryon numbers up to five. We also apply our model setting to the nucleon and discuss the stability of the quark droplets against nuclei.