S = −1 meson-baryon interaction in hot and dense nuclear matter: chiral symmetry, many-body and unitarization for a road to GSI/FAIR

¹ Institut für Theoretische Physik, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue Straße 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
² Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Ruth-Moufang-Straße 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
³ Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (IEEC/CSIC), Campus Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Facultat de Ciències, Torre C5, E-08193 Bellaterra, Spain
⁴ Subatech, UMR 6457, IN2P3/CNRS, Université de Nantes, École des Mines de Nantes, 4 rue Alfred Kastler, 44307 Nantes cedex 3, France

^a e-mail: cabrera@fias.uni-frankfurt.de
^b e-mail: tolos@ice.csic.es
^c e-mail: Aichelin@subatech.in2p3.fr
^d e-mail: Elena.Bratkovskaya@th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de

Published online: 22 June 2015

Abstract

The dynamics of strange pseudoscalar and vector mesons in hot and dense nuclear matter is studied within a chiral unitary framework in coupled channels. Our results set up the starting point for implementations in microscopic transport approaches of heavy-ion collisions, particularly at the conditions of the forthcoming experiments at GSI/FAIR and NICA-Dubna. In the K̄ N sector we focus on the calculation of (off-shell) transition rates for the most relevant binary reactions involved in strangeness production close to threshold energies, with special attention to the excitation of sub-threshold hyperon resonances and isospin effects (e.g. K̄ p vs K̄ n). We also give an overview of recent theoretical developments regarding the dynamics of strange vector mesons (K*, K̄* and ϕ) in the nuclear medium, in connection with experimental activity from heavy-ion collisions and nuclear production reactions. We emphasize the role of hadronic decay modes and the excitation of hyperon resonances as the driving mechanisms modifying the properties of vector mesons.