Contribution of πN→ΛKto subthreshold kaon production in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract
We have studied kaon production from the interaction of pions with nucleons in heavy-ion collisions at energies below the threshold for kaon production in the nucleon-nucleon interaction in free space. It is found that this contribution is less than 25% of the total kaon yield. The main contribution to kaon production is from baryon-baryon interactions and its magnitude depends sensitively on the nuclear equation of state at high densities.