a Unified Chiral Approach to Meson-Nucleon Interaction

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Resonance states below pion-nucleon threshold and their consequences for nuclear systems

Regular sequences of narrow peaks have been observed in the missing mass spectra in the reactions pp --> p pi^+ X and pd --> ppX_1 below pion-production threshold. They are interpreted in the literature as manifestations of supernarrow light dibaryons, or nucleon resonances, or light pions forming resonance states with the nucleon in its ground state. We discuss how existence of such exotic states would affect properties of nuclear systems. We show that the neutron star structure is drastically changed in all three cases. We find that in the presence of dibaryons or nucleon resonances the maximal possible mass of a neutron star would be smaller than the observational limit. Presence of light pions does not contradict the observed neutron star masses. Light pions allow for the existence of extended nuclear objects of arbitrary size, bound by strong and electromagnetic forces.Comment: preprint ECT*-02-18, 6 pages, 3 figure

Phi Mesons from a Hadronic Fireball

Production of $\phi$ mesons is considered in the course of heavy-ion collisions at SPS energies. We investigate the possible difference in momentum distributions of $\phi$ mesons measured via their leptonic ($\mu^+\mu^-$) and hadronic ($K^+K^-$) decays. Rescattering of secondary kaons in the dense hadron gas together with the influence of in-medium kaon potential can lead to a relative decrease of a $\phi$ yield observed in the hadronic channel. We analyze how the in-medium modifications of meson properties affect apparent - reconstructed momentum distributions of $\phi$ mesons. Quantitative results are presented for central Pb+Pb collisions at $E_{beam}=158 GeV/A$.Comment: style Revtex4,9 pages, 5 figures. submitted to Phys. Rev.

Negative Kaons in Dense Baryonic Matter

Kaon polarization operator in dense baryonic matter of arbitrary isotopic composition is calculated including s- and p-wave kaon-baryon interactions. The regular part of the polarization operator is extracted from the realistic kaon-nucleon interaction based on the chiral and 1/N_c expansion. Contributions of the Lambda(1116), Sigma(1195), Sigma*(1385) resonances are taken explicitly into account in the pole and regular terms with inclusion of mean-field potentials. The baryon-baryon correlations are incorporated and fluctuation contributions are estimated. Results are applied for K- in neutron star matter. Within our model a second-order phase transition to the s-wave K- condensate state occurs at rho_c \gsim 4 \rho_0 once the baryon-baryon correlations are included. We show that the second-order phase transition to the p-wave $K^-$ condensate state may occur at densities $\rho_c \sim 3\div 5 \rho_0$ in dependence on the parameter choice. We demonstrate that a first-order phase transition to a proton-enriched (approximately isospin-symmetric) nucleon matter with a p-wave K- condensate can occur at smaller densities, \rho\lsim 2 \rho_0. The transition is accompanied by the suppression of hyperon concentrations.Comment: 41 pages, 24 figures, revtex4 styl