Kaon and antikaon production in dense nuclear matter

The production and propagation of kaons and antikaons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions have been systematically investigated with the Kaon spectrometer at SIS/GSI. Experimental results on the K+ and K− yield and on the azimuthal emission pattern of K+ mesons are presented. Within the framework of transport models the data can be explained assuming in-medium kaon–nucleon potentials. The comparison of K+ production excitation functions obtained for Au+Au and C+C collisions with results of transport model calculations favours a soft nuclear equation-of-state.