Physics of Dense and Superdense Matter

Abstract

I discuss a few aspects of dense hadronic matter and superdense QCD matter that are considered to be relevant to the physics of compact astrophysical systems. The connection between a "bottom-up approach" and a "top-down approach" is made with the help of an effective field theory strategy. Topics treated are meson condensation going up from low density and color superconductivity going down from asymptotic density with the approach to the chiral phase transition made in terms of Brown-Rho scaling.