Production of phi mesons in subthreshold heavy-ion collisions

Within a BUU type transport model we study $\phi$ meson production in subthreshold Ni+Ni and Ru+Ru reactions. For the first time we included in our model the elementary reaction channels $\rho+N,\Delta \to \phi+N$, $\pi+N(1520) \to \phi+N$ and $\pi \rho$ $\to$ $\phi$. In spite of a substantial increase of the $\phi$ multiplicities by these channels our results stay significantly below the preliminary experimental data.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, version to be published in the proceedings of the SQM2001 Conference (Frankfurt, Germany, 25-29 Sep 2001