Strangeness production and flow in heavy-ion collisions

We study strangeness (K^+, K^-, and Lambda) production and flow in Ni+Ni collisions at 1-2 AGeV, based on the relativistic transport model including the strangeness degrees of freedom. We find that strangeness spectra and flow are sensitive to the properties of strange hadrons in nuclear medium. The predictions of the chiral perturbation theory that the K^+ feels a weak repulsive potential and K^- feels a strong attractive potential are in good agreement with recent experimental data from FOPI and KaoS collaborations.