Stability of strange quark matter in an effective chiral model with scale anomaly

Stability of strange quark matter is investigated within a chiral model which implements the scale anomaly of QCD. As far as quark confinement is mimicked by a large value of the u-quark mass, the model behaves in the chiral limit as a MIT bag model: it yields a stable system composed of quarks surrounded by the vacuum. As soon as finite current quark masses are taken into account, stability is however lost.