Kaon production in heavy ion reactions at intermediate energies

The article reviews the physics related to kaon and antikaon production in heavy ion reactions at intermediate energies. Chiral dynamics predicts substantial modifications of the kaon properties in a dense nuclear environment. The status of the theoretical predictions as well as experimental evidences for medium effects such as repulsive/attractive mass shifts for K+/K− are reviewed. In the vicinity of the thresholds, and even more pronounced below threshold, the production of strangeness is a highly collective process. Starting from elementary reaction channels the phenomenology of K+ and K− production, i.e. freeze-out densities, time scales etc. as derived from experiment and theoretical transport calculations is presented. Below threshold kaon production shows a high sensitivity on the nuclear compression reached in heavy ion reactions. This allows to put constraints on the nuclear equation-of-state which are finally discussed.