In-medium effects on hidden strangeness production in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

We study ϕ meson production in heavy-ion collisions from subthreshold energies of 1.23 A GeV up to RHIC energies within the microscopic Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach where novel production channels for ϕ mesons based on a coupled channel T-matrix approach are implemented along with the collisional broadening of the ϕ meson spectral width in medium. Since ϕ meson production is closely related to the production of kaons and antikaons, antikaon properties are described via the self-consistent coupled-channel unitarized scheme within a SU(3) chiral Lagrangian (G-matrix) which incorporates explicitly the s− and p− waves of the kaon-nucleon interaction, while the in-medium modifications of kaons are accounted for via a kaon-nuclear potential, which is assumed to be proportional to the local baryon density.