Probing the antikaon potential by K-A elastic scattering

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We extract the antikaon potential from differential data on elastic K-A scattering within Glauber theory at an antikaon momentum of 800 MeV/c. The K-N cross section at densities up to 0.1 fm³ is found to be close to the value given in free space K-p and K-n interactions (averaged over the number of protons and neutrons) whereas the ratio α of the real to imaginary part of the forward scattering amplitude f(0) differs from the ratio α in free space indicating a dropping of Re f(0) at finite nuclear density. The extrapolated K- potential at a momentum of 0.8 GeV/c amounts to ≈ --28 MeV at density ρ₀ which is substantially less than the values extracted from kaonic atoms at zero momentum or heavy-ion data at 300 MeV/c≤pₖ≤600 MeV/c. We, furthermore, investigate the perspectives of scattering experiments on ¹²C at low (≈300 MeV/c) and high (≈1.2 GeV/c) momenta.