Antistrange meson-baryon interaction in hot and dense nuclear matter

Abstract

We present a study of in-medium cross sections and (off-shell) transition rates for the most relevant binary reactions for strange pseudoscalar meson production close to threshold in heavy-ion collisions at energies available at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research. Our results rely on a chiral unitary approach in coupled channels which incorporates the $s$ and $p$ waves of the kaon-nucleon interaction. The formalism, which is modified in the hot and dense medium to account for Pauli blocking effects, mean-field binding on baryons, and pion and kaon self-energies, has been improved to implement unitarization and self-consistency for both the $s$- and the $p$-wave interactions at finite temperature and density. This gives access to in-medium amplitudes in several elastic and inelastic coupled channels with strangeness content $S=\ensuremath{-}1$. The obtained total cross sections mostly reflect the fate of the $\ensuremath{\Lambda}(1405)$ resonance, which melts in the nuclear environment, whereas the off-shell transition probabilities are also sensitive to the in-medium properties of the hyperons excited in the $p$-wave amplitudes $[\ensuremath{\Lambda},\ensuremath{\Sigma}$, and ${\ensuremath{\Sigma}}^{*}(1385)]$. The single-particle potentials of these hyperons at finite momentum, density, and temperature are also discussed in connection with the pertinent scattering amplitudes. Our results are the basis for future implementations in microscopic transport approaches accounting for off-shell dynamics of strangeness production in nucleus-nucleus collisions.