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K*0 meson production using a multiphase transport model at RHIC BES energies

Pranjal Barik1, Kadambini Menduli1, Aswini Kumar Sahoo2, and Md. Nasim1

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Phys. Rev. C 114, 014913 – Published 21 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/cw7h-ds58

Abstract

We present the yield, average transverse momentum, and collective flow calculations of K*0 resonances in Au+Au collisions at sNN=19.6, 14.5, and 7.7 GeV using the AMPT model. It is found that, due to hadronic rescattering, the decay daughters of K*0 interact with other particles in the medium, causing the yield of reconstructable K*0 to be significantly suppressed, especially at low transverse momentum. The model results are compared with recent experimental data from Phase-II of the Beam Energy Scan (BES-II) program at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider. The string-melting version of the AMPT model successfully reproduces the measured K*0/K ratios at all three analyzed collision energies. Interestingly, AMPT calculations that exclude the hadronic phase nevertheless provide a reasonable description of the data, thereby challenging the conventional interpretation that hadronic rescattering is the primary mechanism responsible for suppressing the K*0/K ratio in central heavy-ion collisions. In addition, we find that the K*0/K ratio appears to be largely insensitive to the lifetime of the hadronic phase, whereas the average transverse momentum, 〈pT〉, of the K*0 shows a strong dependence, increasing significantly as the lifetime of the hadronic phase becomes longer. We further show that the directed flow (v1) of K*0 mesons is strongly influenced by hadronic rescattering, whereas the elliptic flow (v2) exhibits only weak sensitivity to hadronic effects. These results establish K*0 directed flow as a sensitive probe of the late-stage hadronic medium in heavy-ion collisions. These model calculations therefore provide valuable insight into the underlying physics governing the observed experimental results at RHIC.

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Phys. Rev. C 114, 014913– Published 21 July, 2026
  • Received 19 February 2026
  • Accepted 9 June 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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