Nuclear in-medium and isospin effects on subthreshold kaon production in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

Subthreshold kaon (K$^{0}$ and K$^{+}$) production in neutron-rich nuclear reactions to probe the kaon-nucleon interaction in nuclear medium and to extract the isospin dependent part of the nuclear equation of state at high-baryon densities, is investigated within an isospin and momentum dependent transport model. A repulsive kaon-nucleon potential is implemented in the model through fitting the flow data and inclusive spectra in heavy-ion collisions, which enhances the energetic kaon emission squeezed out in the reaction zone and leads to a variation of the high-momentum spectrum of the K$^{0}$/K$^{+}$ yields. It is found that the stiffness of nuclear symmetry energy plays a significant role on the isospin ratio with decreasing the incident energy and a hard symmetry energy has a larger value of the K$^{0}$/K$^{+}$ ratio in the domain of subthreshold energies.