摘要
We study the inclusive production of strange vector K^∗(892)^+ mesons in π−A reactions at near-threshold laboratory incident pion momenta of 1.4-2.0 GeV/c via a nuclear spectral function approach.The approach accounts for incoherent primary π−meson-proton π−p→K^∗(892)^+Σ^− production processes as well as the influence of the scalar K^∗(892)^+-nucleus potential(or the K^∗(892)^+ in-medium mass shift)on these processes.We calculate the absolute differential and total cross sections for the production of K∗(892)+mesons from carbon and tungsten nuclei at laboratory angles of 0∘-45∘and at the aforementioned momenta in five scenarios for the aforenoted shift.We show that the K^∗(892)^+ momentum distributions and their excitation functions(absolute and relative)possess a high sensitivity to changes in the in-medium K^∗(892)^+ mass shift in the low-momentum region of 0.1-0.6 GeV/c.Therefore,the measurement of such observables in a dedicated experiment at the GSI pion beam facility in the near-threshold momentum domain will allow us to get valuable information on the K^∗(892)^+ in-medium properties.
