2nd Workshop on Kaon Production

2^nd Workshop on Kaon Production
During the fall of 1996 an internal mini-workshop on kaon production was organized at Rossendorf (cf. FZR-150 [September 19961). The aim of this first workshop was to give a survey on the experimental and theoretical Status of kaon production in elementary hadron reactions and in heavy-ion collisions. Since then the Department of Hadron Physics in the Institute of Nuclear and Hadron Physics of the FZR focused in its research activities on nearthreshold strangeness production in colliding hadron systems and on activities devoted to studies with electromagnetic probes.
Since 1996 a considerable Progress has been achieved in the field. New results from COSY (COSY-11, ToF, COSY-13 and first runs at ANKE) as well as SIS (KaoS and FOPI) allow to determine various elementary cross sections in hadron reactions and kaon yields from heavy-ion collisions. These new results led us to organize a second workshop bringing together the experts of these experiments and various theoreticians. An important purpose of the workshop was to enforce the mutual information and to demonstrate the close interrelation of COSY physics and the heavy-ion programme at SIS. Highlights in the field are (i) the consolidation of the need of strong in-medium modifications to describe the K^- production in heavy-ion reactions and (ii) refined measurements of various elementary strangeness channels near threshold. For the latter the role of final state interactions must be clarified ta arrive at a unique input to transport-model calculations for heavy-ion reactions. Many experimental aspects included in the programme have been proposed by P. Senger (GSI), whereas the composition of its theoretical part benefitted a lot from the support by J. Aichelin (Nantes).