Bochum 1998 – scientific programme
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HK: Hadronen und Kerne
HK 59: Heavy Ion Reactions VII, Relativistic Energies
HK 59.5: Talk
Thursday, March 19, 1998, 16:00–16:15, P
Subthreshold K+ Production as a Probe for the Nuclear Equation of State[*] — •C. Sturm — Technische Universität Darmstadt
Using the Kaon Spectrometer at SIS/GSI we have studied subthreshold K+ production in collisions of C+C and Au+Au between 0.8 and 1.5 A·GeV incident energy. This study is considered as a promising tool to extract the nuclear equation of state (EOS): The measured K+ cross section reflects the yield at the high-density phase due to the low probability for K+ to interact with nuclear matter.
According to transport-model calculations the K+ cross section for the light collision system hardly depends on the stiffness of the EOS [1] while e.g. for Au+Au collisions at 1 A·GeV the K+ yield is predicted to be twice as high for a soft EOS as compared to a hard one [2]. Therefore, the ratio σK+Au+Au/σK+C+C as a function of the incident energy is a quantity sensitive to the stiffness of the EOS.
The experimental results will be discussed and compared to the predictions of transport-model calculations.
[1] C. Hartnack et al., Nucl. Phys. A580(1994)643.
[2] Q. Li and C.M. Ko, Phys. Lett. B349(1995)405.
[*] supported by BMBF and GSI