In-medium effects on particle production in heavy ion collisions

The effect of possible in-medium modifications of nucleon–nucleon (NN) cross sections on particle production is investigated in heavy ion collisions (HIC) at intermediate energies. In particular, using a fully covariant relativistic transport approach, we see that the density dependence of the inelastic cross sections appreciably affects the pion and kaon yields and their rapidity distributions. However, the (π−/π+)- and (K0/K+)-ratios depend only moderately on the in-medium behavior of the inelastic cross sections. This is particularly true for kaon yield ratios, since kaons are more uniformly produced in high density regions. Kaon potentials are also suitably evaluated in two schemes, a chiral perturbative approach and an effective meson–quark coupling method, with consistent results showing a similar repulsive contribution for K+ and K0. As a consequence we expect rather reduced effects on the yield ratios. We conclude that particle ratios appear to be robust observables for probing the nuclear equation of state (EoS) at high baryon density and, particularly, its isovector sector.