Nuclear medium effects from hadronic atoms

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current understanding of hadronic atoms, emphasizing recent findings on antikaon-nuclear interactions, which suggest a strong attractive potential affecting nuclear states and matter composition.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of hadronic atoms and highlights recent advances in antikaon-nuclear physics, especially the evidence for a deep attractive potential.

Findings

Antikaon-nuclear potential of 150-200 MeV in nuclear matter

Implications for antikaon quasibound states and strange matter

Relevance to kaon condensation in hadronic systems

Abstract

The state of the art in the study of pionic, kaonic and Sigmionic atoms, along with the in-medium nuclear interactions deduced for these hadrons, is reviewed. A special emphasis is placed on recent developments in antikaon-nuclear physics, where a strongly attractive density dependent antikaon-nuclear potential of order 150-200 MeV in nuclear matter emerges by fitting K^- atom data. This has interesting repercussions on antikaon quasibound nuclear states, on the composition of strange hadronic matter and on kaon condensation in self bound hadronic systems.