Strange Mesons as a Probe for Dense Nuclear Matter

Abstract

The production and propagation of kaons and antikaons has been studied in symmetric nucleus-nucleus collisions in the SIS energy range. The ratio of the excitation functions of K^+ production in Au+Au and C+C collisions increases with decreasing beam energy. This effect was predicted for a soft nuclear equation-of-state. In noncentral Au+Au collisions, the K^+ mesons are preferentially emitted perpendicular to the reaction plane. The K^-/K^+ ratio from A+A collisions at beam energies which are equivalent with respect to the threshold is found to be about two orders of magnitude larger than the corresponding ratio from proton-proton collisions. Both effects are considered to be experimental signatures for a modification of kaon properties in the dense nuclear medium.

Talk given at the Erice School on Nuclear Physics, Erice, Sicily, Italy, Sept. 17-25, 1998

References in corpus (7)

• Nuclear kaon dynamics
• Disappearance of Elliptic Flow: A New Probe for the Nuclear Equation of State
• Kaon production in heavy-ion collisions and maximum mass of neutron stars
• Analysis of Kaon Production at SIS Energies
• Enhanced Out-of-plane Emission of K+ Mesons observed in Au+Au Collisions at 1 AGeV
• Antikaon production in nucleon-nucleon reactions near threshold
• Nucleon self-energy in the relativistic Brueckner approach

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Nucleon and hadron structure changes in the nuclear medium and impact on observables
• Close-to-threshold Meson Production in Hadronic Interactions
• Kaon pair production close to threshold
• Strangeness production from $\pi N$ collisions in nuclear matter
• Sub-threshold phi-meson yield in central 58Ni+58Ni collisions
• Kaon properties and cross sections in nuclear medium
• Experimental results on strangeness production in proton-proton collisions at COSY
• Nuclear transparency and effective kaon-nucleon cross section from the A(e, e'K+) reaction