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.