Phenomenological analysis of K+ meson production in proton-nucleus collisions

Abstract

Total and differential cross sections from literature, on the production of K+ mesons in pA interactions at projectile energies between T=0.8 and 2.9 GeV, covering the transition across the free nucleon-nucleon threshold at 1.58 GeV, have been investigated. From the target-mass dependence of the production cross sections no evidence for the expected change of the dominant reaction mechanism from two-step to direct kaon production was found. At T=1.0 GeV the A dependences of the total cross sections and of the most recent data from COSY-Juelich, differential cross sections measured under forward angles, are strongly different. The invariant K+ production cross sections show an overall exponential scaling behavior with the squared four-momentum transfer between the beam proton and the produced K+ meson for t< -0.05 GeV^2 independent of the beam energy and emission angle. The data from COSY-Juelich reveal a strongly different t dependence in the region of t>0 GeV^2. Further data at forward angles and different beam energies should be taken in order to explore this region of kinematically extreme conditions.

9 Pages, 11 Figures

References in corpus (1)

• Forward K+ production in subthreshold pA collisions at 1.0 GeV

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Kaon production in heavy ion reactions at intermediate energies
• Strangeness Production close to Threshold in Proton-Nucleus and Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Phi-meson photoproduction from nuclei
• Evidence of kaon nuclear and Coulomb potential effects on soft K+ production from nuclei
• Inclusive K^+ meson production in proton-nucleus interactions
• Transport analysis of K+ production in proton-nucleus reactions
• Study of the p$-$p$-$K${}^{+}$ and p$-$p$-$K${}^{-}$ dynamics using the femtoscopy technique
• Subthreshold and near-threshold kaon and antikaon production in proton-nucleus reactions
• Subthreshold antiproton production in proton-carbon reactions
• New method of studying slow strange meson properties in nuclear matter