FINAL-STATE RESCATTERINGS OF KAONS IN RELATIVISTIC NUCLEAR COLLISIONS

In recent years the studies of the relativistic heavy-ion collisions g ive rise to extensive interest. One of the motivations of these studie s is to probe the equation of state (EOS) of nuclear matter at high de nsity and/or temperature. This is very significant for nuclear physics and particle physics and astrophysics. The kaons produced in the proc ess of nuclear collisions at an incident energy of about 1 GeV/nucleon have been suggested as a sensitive probe for the hot and dense nuclea r matter formed in the early stage of collisions[1-5]. In pervious stu dies, however, the final-state interactions of the produced kaons with nucleons have normally been ignored except in a schematic study[6]. I n order to study the influence of this effect on the property of kaons , in the relativistic Vlasov-Uehling-Uhlenbeck model (RVUU) we have in troduced the enhancement method of kaon production to the treatment of the final-state rescattering of kaons in nuclear matter. The results of this dynamic simulation show that both the yield and the apparent t emperature of kaons at large angles in laboratory system are drastical ly increased if the rescattering effect of kaons is included. This ind icates that the final-state interactions of kaons with nucleons must b e considered in order to evaluate reasonably the kaon energy spectrum and angular distribution.