First application of a microscopic $K^-NN$ absorption model in calculations of kaonic atoms

TL;DR

This paper presents the first microscopic model for $K^-NN$ absorption in kaonic atoms, improving data description and aligning with experimental absorption ratios, highlighting the importance of multi-nucleon interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a microscopic $K^-NN$ absorption model based on chiral coupled-channels, enhancing the understanding of kaonic atom interactions and data fitting.

Findings

Improved fit to kaonic atom data with $K^-NN$ absorption included.

Reasonable agreement of absorption ratios with experimental data.

Density dependence indicates areas for model refinement.

Abstract

Strong interaction energy shifts and widths in kaonic atoms are calculated for the first time using microscopic $K^- N$ + $K^- NN$ potentials derived from $K^- N$ scattering amplitudes constructed within SU(3) chiral coupled-channels models of meson-baryon interactions. The in-medium modifications of the free-space amplitudes due to the Pauli correlations are taken into account. The $K^-N+K^-NN$ potentials evaluated for 23 nuclear species are confronted with kaonic atoms data. The description of the data significantly improves when the $K^-NN$ absorption is included. To get $\chi^2$ as low as for the $K^-N+$phenomenological multi-nucleon potential an additional phenomenological term, accounting for $K^{-}-3N(4N)$ processes, is still needed. However, density dependence of this phenomenological term points out some deficiencies in the microscopic potentials and further improvements of the applied model are thus desirable. The calculated branching ratios for $K^-N$ and $K^-NN$ absorption channels in the $^{12}$C$+K^-$ atom are in reasonable agreement with the old bubble chamber data, as well as with the latest data from the AMADEUS Collaboration.