Transport analysis of in-medium hadron effects in pA and AA collisions

Abstract

The production and decay of vector mesons ($\rho ,\omega$) in pA and AA reactions is studied with particular emphasis on their in-medium spectral functions. It is explored within transport calculations if hadronic in-medium decays like ${\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}$ or ${\pi }^0\gamma$ might provide complementary information to their dilepton ($e^{+}{e}^{-}$) decays. Whereas the ${\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}$ signal from the $\rho$-meson is found to be strongly distorted by pion rescattering, the $\omega$-meson Dalitz decay to ${\pi }^0\gamma$ appears promising even for more heavy nuclei in $\gamma A$ and pA reactions. Furthermore, the influence of nucleon and kaon/antikaon potentials on the $K^{\pm }$ yields and spectra in pA collisions is calculated and compared to the recent data from the ANKE Collaboration.

Comments: 3 pages, LaTeX, 3 postscript figures; contribution to QNP2002, Juelich, June 10-14, 2002