  We study in detail the nuclear aspects of a neutron-star merger in which
deconfinement to quark matter takes place. For this purpose, we make use of the
Chiral Mean Field (CMF) model, an effective relativistic model that includes
self-consistent chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement to quark matter
and, for this reason, predicts the existence of different degrees of freedom
depending on the local density/chemical potential and temperature. We then use
the out-of-chemical-equilibrium finite-temperature CMF equation of state in
full general-relativistic simulations to analyze which regions of different QCD
phase diagrams are probed and which conditions, such as strangeness and
entropy, are generated when a strong first-order phase transition appears. We
also investigate the amount of electrons present in different stages of the
merger and discuss how far from chemical equilibrium they can be and, finally,
draw some comparisons with matter created in supernova explosions and heavy-ion
collisions.
