Strangeness and charm in nuclear matter

The properties of strange (K, K¯ and K¯⁎) and open-charm (D, D¯ and D⁎) mesons in dense matter are studied using a unitary approach in coupled channels for meson-baryon scattering. In the strangeness sector, the interaction with nucleons always comes through vector-meson exchange, which is evaluated by chiral and hidden gauge Lagrangians. For the interaction of charmed mesons with nucleons we extend the SU(3) Weinberg-Tomozawa Lagrangian to incorporate spin-flavor symmetry and implement a suitable flavor symmetry breaking. The in-medium solution for the scattering amplitude accounts for Pauli blocking effects and meson self-energies. On one hand, we obtain the K, K¯ and K¯⁎ spectral functions in the nuclear medium and study their behaviour at finite density, temperature and momentum. We also make an estimate of the transparency ratio of the γA→K+K⁎−A′ reaction, which we propose as a tool to detect in-medium modifications of the K¯⁎ meson. On the other hand, in the charm sector, several resonances with negative parity are generated dynamically by the s-wave interaction between pseudoscalar and vector meson multiplets with 1/2+ and 3/2+ baryons. The properties of these states in matter are analyzed and their influence on the open-charm meson spectral functions is studied. We finally discuss the possible formation of D-mesic nuclei at FAIR energies.