Excited strange mesons and their decays in a chiral U(3) x U(3) Lagrangian

We bosonize the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio quark model with separable nonlocal inte ractions in order to derive a chiral U(3) x U(3) Lagrangian, containing, be sides the usual meson fields, their first radial excitations. The spontaneo us breaking of chiral symmetry is governed by the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio gap eq uation. The first radial excitations of the kaon, K*, and phi are described with the help of two form factors. The decays K*' --> rho K, K*' -->, K*pi , K*' --> K pi, phi' --> K*K, phi' --> (K) over bar K, K' --> K rho, K' --> K*pi, and K' --> K2 pi are considered, and a qualitative agreement of our results with the experimental data is found. (C) 2000 MAIK "Nauka/Interperi odica".