Phi meson production in hadronic matter

Abstract

The decrease of hadron masses in hot and dense hadronic matter as a result of the restoration of chiral symmetry increases substantially the phi meson production cross section from the reactions K K →φρ and KΛ→φN. In the hydrochemical model, we show that this leads to an enhanced production of phi mesons in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions and may be responsible for the large φ ω ratio that has been recently observed in CERN experiments.