The ratio of forward K+ production on copper, silver and gold targets to that on carbon has been measured at proton beam energies between 1.5 and 2.3 GeV as a function of the kaon momentum pK using the ANKE spectrometer at COSYJülich. The strong suppression in the ratios observed for pK < 200–250 MeV/c may be ascribed to a combination of Coulomb and nuclear repulsion in the K+A system. This ope...

A careful reanalysis is done of the contribution to K+ nucleus scattering from the interaction of the kaon with the virtual pion cloud. The usual approximations made in the evaluation of the related kaon selfenergy are shown to fail badly. We also find new interaction mechanisms which provide appreciable corrections to the kaon selfenergy. Some of these contribute to the imaginary part below pi...

The pion-nucleon and kaon-nucleon scattering lengths are studied in the QCD sum rule. We show that the leading and next-to-leading order terms of the OPE give rise to the Tomozawa-Weinberg and sigma terms, respectively. We also show that in the kaon-nucleon system the Λ(1405) contribution has to be subtracted from the OPE side in order to obtain the scattering length. The odd components of the ...

The most recent progress and future prospects in kaon physics are reviewed. Main results are the first observation of the rare decays KS → π ee and KS → π μμ by NA48, newK → πνν event observed by E949 and new precision measurements of KS,L → πeν decays by KTeV, KLOE and NA48 made in an effort to resolve the slight deviation from the unitarity in the CKM matrix, involving the |Vus| coupling.

We discuss the equation of state of neutron stars in the dense interior considering hyperons and the possible onset of kaon condensation within the relativistic mean field model. We find that hyperons are favoured in dense matter and that their appearance make the existence of a kaon condensed phase quite unlikely. Implications for the recent measurements of kaons in heavy ion collisions at sub...

The two-kaon interferometry at RHIC is studied in a multi-phase transport model. Similar to the pion case, we find strong space-time correlation at freeze-out for the kaon emission source, which results in a large positive Rout−t term and tends to reduce the Rout/Rside ratio. Unlike the pion case, the source radii for kaons determined from the emission function are close to the radius parameter...