Comparative study of proton and positive kaon interactions with carbon: hint of new physics like partial restoration of chiral symmetry in nuclei

Abstract

Concerning the scattering of K+ - mesons on nuclei, the explicit discrepancy between experimental data and optical model calculations is a longstanding problem and none of the conventional medium effect corrections improves significantly the agreement with the data. In this paper the cross sections for the reactions K++12C at incident momenta of the kaon Plab < 800 MeV/c are calculated on the basis of Glauber’s high-energy approximation. The noneikonal corrections, Fermi motion effect and both Pauli and dynamic short-range correlations were incorporated in the Glauber approach for nuclear collisions. The influence of all these corrections on the calculation of the cross sections for the interactions of kaon with nucleus is discussed. The full calculations is compared to available data. The corrections seem to fail in reproducing the experimental data. Our results is compared to optical model calculations. We show that both our model and optical model fails to give a satisfactory description of K+-nuclei cross sections. Different attempts to remove this discrepancy with the in-medium effects taken into account are discussed.