Phi decay in nuclei

Abstract

We have studied the decay of the \phi meson in nuclear matter by taking into account the renormalization of the K and \bar{K} mesons in the medium. We separate the contribution of the total width into different reaction channels, K\bar{K} and KYh, the latter ones associated with the \phi N \to K^+ Y reactions. We find a total width at normal nuclear matter density of about 22 MeV, considerably larger than the free one.

Comments: 14 pages, 5 figures