Workshop for young scientists with research interests focused on physics at FAIR

In Au+Au-collisions at 1.23 AGeV, the complete strangeness production is below its nucleon-nucleon threshold. In baryon dominated matter K+ and K− exhibit different properties, because K- can be resonantly absorbed by nucleons. Although strangeness exchange reactions have been proposed to be the dominant channel for K− production below threshold, the production yield could also be explained in Ar+KCl-reactions at 1.76 AGeV based on a statistical hadronization model fit to the measured particle yields. To take care for strangeness conservation, strangeness is calculated canonically within Rc, and therefore the ratio of φ/K− is predicted to rise with decreasing beam energies and hence the feed-down of φ-mesons to Kaons becomes more important. In April and May 2012, 7.3 billion Au(1.23 GeV per nucleon)+Au collisions have been recorded by the HADES detector. In this contribution, we present results of the charged kaon and φ-meson production and test the above discussed prediction.