Nuclear medium effects from hadronic atoms

Abstract

The state of the art in the study of pionic, kaonic and Sigmionic atoms, along with the in-medium nuclear interactions deduced for these hadrons, is reviewed. A special emphasis is placed on recent developments in antikaon-nuclear physics, where a strongly attractive density dependent antikaon-nuclear potential of order 150-200 MeV in nuclear matter emerges by fitting K^- atom data. This has interesting repercussions on antikaon quasibound nuclear states, on the composition of strange hadronic matter and on kaon condensation in self bound hadronic systems.

updated version of presentation by A. Gal in INPC10, Vancouver, July 2010; dedicated to Gerry Brown on the occasion of his 85th birthday; From Nuclei to Stars, Festschrift in Honor of Gerald E. Brown, Ed. Sabine Lee (World Scientific, 2011) pp.127-140