Medium effects on kaon and antikaon spectra in heavy-ion collisions

In the linear chiral perturbation theory, both kaon and antikaon masses decrease in dense matter. There is also a repulsive vector potential for the kaon and an attractive one for the antikaon. With these effects included in the relativistic transport model, it is found that the slope parameter of the kaon kinetic energy distribution is larger than that of the antikaon. This is consistent with the experimental data from heavy-ion collisions in the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron experiments at Brookhaven.