  Properties of dense quark matter in and out of chemical equilibrium are
studied within the SU(3) Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. In addition to the 4-fermion
scalar and vector terms the model includes also the 6-fermion flavour mixing
interaction. First we study a novel form of deconfined matter, meso-matter,
which is composed of equal number of quarks and antiquarks. It can be thought
of as a strongly compressed meson gas where mesons are melted into their
elementary constituents, quarks and antiquarks. Strongly bound states in this
quark-antiquark matter are predicted for all flavour combinations of
quark-antiquark pairs. The maximum binding energy reaches up to 180 MeV per
pair for mixtures with about 70% of strange quark-antiquark pairs. Equilibrated
baryon-rich quark matter with various flavour compositions is also studied. In
this case only shallow bound states appear in systems with a significant
admixture (about 40%) of strange quarks (strangelets). Their binding energies
are quite sensitive to the relative strengths of scalar and vector
interactions. The common property of all these bound states is that they appear
at high particle densities when the chiral symmetry is nearly restored. Thermal
properties of meso-matter as well as chemically equilibrated strange quark
matter are also investigated. Possible decay modes of these bound states are
discussed.
