J. Speer

The kaon spectrometer at SIS

A double-focussing QD magnetic spectrometer has been developed and installed at the SIS heavy-ion facility at GSI in Darmstadt. The spectrometers primary purpose is to study meson production in energetic nucleus-nucleus collisions in detail. Its compact design is matched to the requirements of kaon detection with short flight path (5–6.5 m), large solid angle (up to 35 msr), wide momentum acceptance (pmaxpmin ⋍ 2), maximum momentum 1.6 GeV/c (1.9 GeV/c at reduced solid angle) and reasonable momentum resolution (⋍ 1% without and ⋍ 10−3 with ray tracing). A focal-plane length of about 1.5 m allows the efficient use of the detectors necessary for particle identification and ray-tracing, involving wire chambers, time-of-flight scintillators and Cherenkov detectors. Collisions can be characterized by two multiple-module plastic-scintillator hodoscopes detecting reaction fragments in the forward hemisphere. While the primary purpose for the construction of the spectrometer is the measurement of kaons, it can serve as a general purpose magnetic spectrometer. Its large solid angle also allows the study of two-particle correlations.

Enhanced out-of-plane emission of K+ mesons observed in Au + Au collisions at 1-A/GeV

The azimuthal angular distribution of K+ mesons has been measured in Au + Au collisions at 1 AGeV. In peripheral and semi-central collisions, K+ mesons preferentially are emitted perpendicular to the reaction plane. The strength of the azimuthal anisotropy of K+ emission is comparable to the one of pions. No in-plane flow was found for K+ mesons near projectile and target rapidity.

Properties of high-energy pions emitted from heavy-ion collisions at 1 GeV/nucleon

Positively charged pions and protons from collisions of Ne+NaF and Au+Au at 1 GeV/nucleon incident energy were measured near midrapidity. The center-of-mass pion spectra deviate from a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. The slope of the high-energy part of the pion spectra varies significantly with the system mass and little with the size of the reaction zone. While the total pion yield rises linearly with the number of participant nucleons, the highenergy component increases more than linearly.

Kaon production in heavy ion collisions and the nuclear equation of state

Abstract Double differential cross sections for protons, π + and K + are measured in Au + Au collisions at 1.0 GeV/u and Θ lab =44°±4° with a new magnetic spectrometer at SIS. The pion spectra show an enhancement at low momenta with respect to a thermal distribution and little dependence on the collision centrality. The high-energetic pions measured in semi-central collisions at approximately midrapidity exhibit an anisotropic azimuthal angular distribution, peaking at 90° and 270° with respect to the reaction plane. The same feature is observed for protons. The kaon to proton ratio increases with the number of participating nucleons, i.e. with the centrality of the collision, whereas the pion to proton ratio stays constant. The first data on subthreshold K + production in a heavy mass collision system are discussed with respect to nuclear matter properties by a comparison to microscopic transport calculations.

Kaon production in hadronic matter

Subthreshold kaon production has been studied in symmetric nucleus-nucleus collisions as a function of the nucleus mass, beam energy and centrality. In Au+Au collsions at 1 AGeV theK + multiplicity increases more than linearly with increasing number of participating nucleons. Transport calculations have to assume a soft equation of state in order to reproduce the data. The in-mediumK − cross section measured in Ni+Ni collisions is enhanced by about a factor of 7 as compared to the free cross section when using theK + cross section at equivalent beam energies as a normalization.