Strangeness production in heavy-ion collisions

Nucleus-nucleus collisions provide the unique opportunity to create and to investigate dense nuclear matter in the laboratory. The collision experiments address fundamental aspects of strong-interaction physics: the nuclear equation-of-state at high baryon densities, the modification of hadron properties in the dense nuclear medium, and the phase transition from hadronic matter to the quark-gluon plasma. The experimental results are relevant for our understanding of the dynamics of core-collapse supernovae, and of the structure of neutron stars. In particular, strange particles are promising diagnostic probes of dense nuclear matter. Existing experimental data, their theoretical interpretations, and future experiments will be discussed.