Measurement of strange particle production in the NICA fixed-target programme

Strange particles provide a sensitive tool to study the dense and hot matter created in relativistic nuclear collisions. Although strangeness production in such collisions has been a topic of experimental and theoretical research for many years, its understanding is far from being complete. This holds in particular for multi-strange hyperons and for lower collision energies as relevant for NICA and FAIR. Multi-strange particles, being sensitive to both the mechanism of strangeness production and the net-baryon density, are expected to shed light on the state of the created matter and to indicate possible transitions to new phases of strongly interacting matter. We thus advocate the measurement of hyperons and φ mesons in a fixed-target experiment at NICA (BM rate at N), which can be achieved by a relatively compact detector system. (orig.)