Strange meson-baryon interaction in hot and dense medium: recent progress for a road to GSI/FAIR

TL;DR

This paper investigates strange meson-baryon interactions in hot, dense nuclear matter, emphasizing recent progress in understanding hyperon resonance excitation and sub-threshold strangeness production relevant for upcoming heavy-ion collision experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a chiral unitary approach to model $ar K N$ scattering in dense matter and explores unconventional strangeness generation mechanisms linked to recent experimental findings.

Findings

Calculated transition rates for hyperon resonance excitation.

Demonstrated potential for sub-threshold $ar K$ and $ar ext{meson}$ production.

Provided insights into strangeness dynamics relevant for GSI/FAIR and NICA-Dubna.

Abstract

We report recent results on the dynamics of strange hadrons in two-body reactions relevant for near-threshold production in heavy-ion collisions at GSI/FAIR and NICA-Dubna. In particular, $\bar K N$ scattering in hot and dense nuclear matter is studied within a chiral unitary framework in coupled channels, setting up the starting point for implementations in microscopic off-shell transport approaches. We focus on the calculation of transition rates with special attention to the excitation of hyperon resonances and isospin effects. Additionally, we explore "unconventional" strangeness generation by meson-meson and meson-baryon interactions in connection with recent HADES observations of deep sub-threshold $\phi$ and $\Xi$ production.