Kaon production at subthreshold energies

We present a comprehensive investigation of subthreshold and threshold kaon production in the framework of the QMD model. The calculation shows that the kaon yield depends strongly on the nuclear equation of state (EOS) and subthreshold kaon experiments may therefore offer the up to now best possibility to determine this yet unknown property of nuclear matter. Whereas static equations of state are in quite good agreement with the data the more realistic momentum dependent EOS's underpredict the data by about a factor of three. Most kaons are produced in a two step process with an intermediate Δ, a process which is absent in NN collisions. Therefore the kaon yield is much higher than expected from the extrapolation of pp data. We discuss in detail the influence of the elementary kaon production cross section, the contribution of different production channels and the properties of the nuclear environment at the place where the kaon is produced. The decrease of the number of produced kaons per participant with decreasing participant number, which is also observed experimentally, has two sources: The nonmaxwellian momentum distribution for small participant numbers as well as a reduction of the ΔΔ channel. This finding is supported by the observed decrease of high momentum pions. We compare our results with other calculations and discuss in detail the theoretical and experimental uncertainties. They include the yet only vaguely known elementary kaon production cross section at the threshold, the lack of a quantum-mechanical treatment of the two step production process as well as the behaviour of the kaon (and therefore also of the kaon production threshold) in the nuclear environment. ((orig.))