ϕ decay: A relevant source for<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:msup><mml:mi>K</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:mo>−</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:msup></mml:mrow></mml:math>production at energies available at the GSI Schwerionen-Synchrotron (SIS)?

We present phase space distributions and multiplicities of ${K}^{+}$, ${K}^{\ensuremath{-}}$, and \ensuremath{\phi} mesons produced in $\mathrm{Ar}+\mathrm{KCl}$ reactions at a kinetic beam energy of 1.756 GeV/nucleon and measured with the HADES spectrometer. The inverse slope parameters and yields of kaons supplement the systematics of previous measurements. The percentage of ${K}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ mesons coming from \ensuremath{\phi} decay is found to be $18\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}7%$.