Hard-core deconfinement and soft-surface delocalization from nuclear to quark matter

We propose a conceptual distinction between hard and soft realizations of deconfinement from nuclear to quark matter. In the high density region of hard deconfinement the repulsive hard cores of baryons overlap each other and bulk thermodynamics is dominated by the core properties that can be experimentally accessed in high-energy scattering experiments. We find that the equation of state estimated from a single baryon core is fairly consistent with those empirically known from neutron star phenomenology. We next discuss a novel concept of soft deconfinement, characterized by quantum percolation of quark wave functions, at densities lower than the threshold for hard deconfinement. We make a brief review of quantum percolation in the context of nuclear and quark matter and illustrate a possible scenario of quark deconfinement at high baryon densities.