Kaon production in nucleus - nucleus collisions at 92 MeV per nucleon

Abstract The cross sections for K + meson production in collisions of 36 Ar on 12 C, nat Ti and 181 Ta at an incident energy of 92 MeV per nucleon have been measured. A description of the set-up and of the method is given ; it is based on measurement of the muon decay of the positive kaon. At such a low incident energy the K + production seems to be more sensitive to the available energy in the center of mass of the nucleus-nucleus system than to the coulomb corrected incident energy normalized to the production threshold in a free nucleon-nucleon process.