Catalytic Reactions in Heavy-ion Collisions

TL;DR

This paper explores new phi meson production reactions in heavy-ion collisions, highlighting their potential as significant sources that influence phi yield distributions and centrality dependence.

Contribution

It introduces novel phi meson production channels involving hyperons and anti-kaons, which are not suppressed by the OZI rule, offering new insights into collision dynamics.

Findings

Reactions pi Y--> phi Y and anti-K N --> phi Y are significant sources of phi mesons.

These reactions can alter the centrality dependence of phi yields.

They impact the rapidity distributions of phi mesons.

Abstract

We discuss a new type of reactions of a phi meson production on hyperons, pi Y--> phi Y and anti-kaons bar-K N --> phi Y. These reactions are not suppressed according to Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka rule and can be a new efficient source of phi mesons in a nucleus-nucleus collision. We discuss how these reactions can affect the centrality dependence and the rapidity distributions of the phi yield.