Electroweak properties of kaons in a nuclear medium

Abstract

Kaon electroweak properties in symmetric nuclear matter are studied in the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model using the proper-time regularization. The valence quark properties in symmetric nuclear matter are calculated in the quark-meson coupling model, and they are used as inputs for studying the in-medium kaon properties in the NJL model. We evaluate the kaon decay constant, kaon-quark coupling constant, and $K^+$ electromagnetic form factor by two different approaches. Namely, by two different ways of calculating the in-medium constituent quark masses of the light quarks. We predict that, in both approaches, the kaon decay constant and kaon-quark coupling constant decrease as nuclear density increases, while the $K^+$ charge radius increases by 20-25\% at normal nuclear density.