Abstract

A new formalism to calculate the in-medium chiral condensate is presented. At lower densities, this approach leads to a linear expression. If we demand a compatibility with the famous model-independent result, then the pion-nucleon sigma term should be six times the average current mass of light quarks. QCD-like interactions may slow the decreasing behavior of the condensate with increasing densities, compared with the linear extrapolation, if densities are lower than twice the nuclear saturation density. At higher densities, the condensate vanishes inevitably. © 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.