Kaon effective mass and energy from a novel chiral SU(3)-symmetric Lagrangian

A new chiral SU(3) Lagrangian is proposed to describe the properties of kao ns and antikaons in the nuclear medium, the ground state of dense matter, a nd the kaon-nuclear interactions consistently. The saturation properties of nuclear matter are reproduced as well as the results of Dirac-Bruckner the ory. Our numerical results show that the kaon effective mass might be chang ed only moderately in the nuclear medium due to highly nonlinear density ef fects. After taking into account the coupling between the omega meson and t he kaon, we obtain similar results for the effective kaon and antikaon ener gies as calculated in the one-boson-exchange model while in our model the p arameters of the kaon-nuclear interactions are constrained by the SU(3) chi ral symmetry. [S0556-2813(99)00806-7].