Hot nuclear matter with dilatons

We study hot nuclear matter in a model based on nucleon interactions deriving from the exchange of scalar and vector mesons. The scale breaking of quantum chromodynamics is treated 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 the dilaton leads to a metastable high-density state at zero pressure, similar to that found by Glendenning who considered instead the admixture of higher baryon resonances