FROM KAON-NUCLEAR INTERACTIONS TO KAON CONDENSATION

An effective chiral lagrangian in heavy-fermion formalism whose parame ters are constrained by kaon-nucleon and kaon-nuclear interactions nex t to the leading order in chiral expansion is used to describe kaon co ndensation in dense ''neutron star'' matter. The critical density is f ound to be robust with respect to the parameters of the chiral lagrang ian and is found to be rho(c) is similar to (3-4)rho0. Once kaon conde nsation sets in, the system is no longer composed of neutron matter bu t of nuclear matter. Possible consequences on stellar collapse with th e formation of compact ''nuclear stars'' or light mass black holes are pointed out.