HOT NUCLEAR-MATTER WITH DILATONS

We study hot nuclear matter in a model based on nucleon interactions d eriving from the exchange of scalar and vector mesons. The main new fe ature of our work is the treatment of the scale breaking of quantum ch romodynamics through the introduction of a dilaton field, Although the dilaton effects are quite small quantitatively, they affect the high- temperature phase transition appreciably. We find that inclusion of th e dilaton leads to a metastable high-density state at zero pressure, s imilar to that found by Glendenning who considered instead the admixtu re of higher baryon resonances.