Abstract: The properties of strange (K, (K) over bar and (K) over bar*) and open-charm (D, (D) over bar and D*) mesons in dense matter are studied using a unitary approach in coupled channels for meson-baryon scattering. In the strangeness sector, the interaction with nucleons always comes through vector-meson exchange, which is evaluated by chiral and hidden gauge Lagrangians. For the interaction of charmed mesons with nucleons we extend the SU(3) Weinberg-Tomozawa Lagrangian to incorporate spin-flavor symmetry and implement a suitable flavor symmetry breaking. The in-medium solution for the scattering amplitude accounts for Pauli blocking effects and meson self-energies. On one hand, we obtain the K, (K) over bar and (K) over bar* spectral functions in the nuclear medium and study their behaviour at finite density, temperature and momentum. We also make an estimate of the transparency ratio of the gamma A -> K+ K*(-) A' reaction, which we propose as a tool to detect in-medium modifications of the (K) over bar* meson. On the other hand, in the charm sector, several resonances with negative parity are generated dynamically by the s-wave interaction between pseudoscalar and vector meson multiplets with 1/2(+) and 3/2(+) baryons. The properties of these states in matter are analyzed and their influence on the open-charm meson spectral functions is studied. We finally discuss the possible formation of D-mesic nuclei at FAIR energies.

Abstract: We present a chiral (K) over barN interaction model that has been developed and optimized in order to account for the experimental data of inelastic (K) over barN reaction channels that open at higher energies. In particular, we study the effect of the higher partial waves, which originate directly from the chiral Lagrangian, as they could supersede the role of high-spin resonances employed in earlier phenomenological models to describe meson-baryon cross sections in the 2 GeV region. We present a detailed derivation of the partial wave amplitudes that emerge from the chiral SU(3) meson-baryon Lagrangian up to the d-waves and next-to-leading order in the chiral expansion. We implement a nonperturbative unitarization in coupled channels and optimize the model parameters to a large pool of experimental data in the relevant energy range where these new contributions are expected to be important. The obtained results are encouraging. They indicate the ability of the chiral higher partial waves to extend the description of the scattering data to higher energies and to account for structures in the reaction cross-sections that cannot be accommodated by theoretical models limited to the s-waves.

Abstract: We evaluate the width of the omega meson in nuclear matter. We consider the free decay mode of the omega into three pions, which is dominated by rho IEuro decay, and replace the rho and pi propagators by their medium-modified ones. We also take into account the quasielastic and inelastic processes induced by a vector-baryon interaction dominated by vector meson exchange, as well as the contributions coming from the mechanism with medium-modified K , propagators. We obtain a substantial increase of the omega width in the medium, reaching a value of 121 +/- 10 MeV at normal nuclear matter density for an omega at rest, which comes mainly from omega N -> pi pi N, omega NN -> pi NN processes associated to the dominant omega -> rho IEuro decay mode. The value of the width increases moderately with momentum, reaching values of around 200MeV at 600MeV/c.

Abstract: The full optimization of the design and operation of instruments whose functioning relies on the interaction of radiation with matter is a super-human task, due to the large dimensionality of the space of possible choices for geometry, detection technology, materials, data-acquisition, and information-extraction techniques, and the interdependence of the related parameters. On the other hand, massive potential gains in performance over standard, “experience-driven” layouts are in principle within our reach if an objective function fully aligned with the final goals of the instrument is maximized through a systematic search of the configuration space. The stochastic nature of the involved quantum processes make the modeling of these systems an intractable problem from a classical statistics point of view, yet the construction of a fully differentiable pipeline and the use of deep learning techniques may allow the simultaneous optimization of all design parameters.