Negative Kaons in Dense Baryonic Matter

Abstract

Kaon polarization operator in dense baryonic matter of arbitrary isotopic composition is calculated including s- and p-wave kaon-baryon interactions. The regular part of the polarization operator is extracted from the realistic kaon-nucleon interaction based on the chiral and 1/N_c expansion. Contributions of the Lambda(1116), Sigma(1195), Sigma*(1385) resonances are taken explicitly into account in the pole and regular terms with inclusion of mean-field potentials. The baryon-baryon correlations are incorporated and fluctuation contributions are estimated. Results are applied for K- in neutron star matter. Within our model a second-order phase transition to the s-wave K- condensate state occurs at $rho_c \gsim 4 ρ_0$ once the baryon-baryon correlations are included. We show that the second-order phase transition to the p-wave $K^{-}$ condensate state may occur at densities ${\rho }_c\sim 3÷5{\rho }_0$ in dependence on the parameter choice. We demonstrate that a first-order phase transition to a proton-enriched (approximately isospin-symmetric) nucleon matter with a p-wave K- condensate can occur at smaller densities, $ρ\lsim 2 ρ_0$. The transition is accompanied by the suppression of hyperon concentrations.

41 pages, 24 figures, revtex4 style