Isospin Effects on Strangeness in Heavy-Ion Collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how isospin influences strangeness production in heavy-ion collisions by analyzing kaon properties using covariant transport models with different kaon-nucleon potentials, highlighting the impact on observables.

Contribution

It introduces a comparative study of isospin effects on kaon production using two different theoretical models within a covariant transport framework.

Findings

Momentum distributions of kaons are sensitive to the kaon-nucleon interaction scheme.

Isospin effects significantly influence strangeness ratios in heavy-ion collisions.

Absolute kaon yields are only moderately affected by isospin effects.

Abstract

Kaon properties are studied within the framework of a fully covariant transport approach. The kaon-nucleon potential is evaluated in two schemes, a chiral perturbative approach and an effective One-Boson-Exchange model. Isospin effects are explicitly accounted for in both models. The transport calculations indicate a significant sensitivity of momentum distributions and total yields of $K^{0,+}$ isospin states on the choice of the kaon-nucleon interaction. Furthermore, isospin effects are rather moderate on absolute kaon yields, but appear on strangeness ratios. This is an important issue in determining the high density symmetry energy from studies of strangeness production in heavy-ion collisions.