The relativistic nuclear dynamics for the SU(3) Goldstone bosons of chiral QCD

In this habilitation theses the chiral SU(3) Lagrangian is applied to antikaon and hyperon propagation in cold nuclear matter. The self consistent many-body dynamics relies on a detailed analysis of the pion, kaon and antikaon-nucleon scattering data with particular emphasis on constraints set by unitarity, covariance, causality and crossing symmetry. The work is based in large parts on collaborations with E.E. Kolomeitsev and C.L. Korpa and part of the results are published already. Unpublished results concern a discussion of the nature of baryon resonances in the context of coupled channel dynamics and a discussion of antikaon production in heavy-ion collisions at subthreshold energies. A new mechanism which drives the system towards equilibrium conditions is proposed. The theses contains also new results on the properties of antikaons and hyperon resonances in asymmetric nuclear matter.