Near-threshold K*（892）+ meson production in the interaction of π- mesons with nuclei

We study the inclusive production of strange vector K（892）+mesons in πA 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 πmeson-proton πp→K（892）Eproduction 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.