{
  "id": "1707.00060",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2017-06-30T22:41:25.000Z",
  "updated": "2017-06-30T22:41:25.000Z",
  "title": "Probing the hot and dense nuclear matter with $K^*,\\bar{K}^*$ vector mesons",
  "authors": [
    "Andrej Ilner",
    "Justin Blair",
    "Daniel Cabrera",
    "Christina Markert",
    "Elena Bratkovskaya"
  ],
  "categories": [
    "hep-ph",
    "nucl-th"
  ],
  "abstract": "We investigate probing the hot and dense nuclear matter with strange vector mesons ($K^*, \\bar{K}^*$). Our analysis is based on PHSD which incorporates partonic and hadronic dof and describes the full dynamics of HICs. This allows to study the $K^*$ and $\\bar{K}^*$ meson formation from the QGP and the in-medium effects related to the modification of their properties during the propagation in dense and hot matter. We employ relativistic Breit-Wigner spectral functions for the $K^*,\\bar{K}^*$ mesons with self-energies obtained from a G-matrix approach to study the role of in-medium effects on the $K^*$ and $\\bar{K}^*$ meson dynamics in HIC from FAIR/NICA to LHC energies. According to our analysis most of the final $K^*/\\bar{K}^*$s, that can be observed experimentally, are produced during the late hadronic phase and stem dominantly from the $K (\\bar{K}) + \\pi \\to K^*(\\bar{K}^*)$ formation channel. The amount of $K^*/\\bar{K}^*$s originating from the QGP channel is comparatively small even at LHC energies and such $K^*/\\bar{K}^*$s can hardly be reconstructed experimentally due to the rescattering of final pions and (anti-)kaons. This mirrors the results from our previous study on the strange vector-meson production in HICs at RHIC energies. The influence of the in-medium effects on the dynamics of the $K^*/\\bar{K}^*$ is rather small since they are mostly produced at low baryon densities. Additional cuts on the shape of the observed signal and the range of the invariant mass region of the $K^*/\\bar{K}^*$ also affect the final spectra. We demonstrate that the $K^*/\\bar{K}^*$ in-medium effects are more visible at lower beam energy, e.g. FAIR/NICA and BES RHIC energies, where the production of $K^*/\\bar{K}^*$s occurs at larger baryon densities. Finally, we present the experimental procedures to extract information on the in-medium masses and widths by fitting final mass spectra at LHC energies.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2017-06-30T22:41:25.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "dense nuclear matter",
      "vector mesons",
      "in-medium effects",
      "lhc energies",
      "employ relativistic breit-wigner spectral functions"
    ],
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 0,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable"
    }
  }
}