$phi$ and K$^-$ mesons from Ni+Ni collisions at the beam energy of 1.91A GeV have been measured by the FOPI spectrometer, with a trigger selecting central and semi-central events amounting to 51% of the total cross section. The phase space distributi
ons, and the total yield of K$^-$, as well as the kinetic energy distribution and the total yield of $phi$ mesons are presented. The $phi$K$^-$ ratio is found to be $0.44 pm 0.07(text{stat}) ^{+0.18}_{-0.12} (text{syst})$, meaning that about 22% of K$^-$ mesons originate from the decays of $phi$ mesons, occurring mostly in vacuum. The inverse slopes of direct kaons are up to about 15 MeV larger than the ones extracted within the one-source model, signalling that a considerable share of gap between the slopes of K$^+$ and K$^-$ could be explained by the contribution of $phi$ mesons to negative kaons.
Differential cross sections of neutral pions emitted in 181Ta + 197Au collisions at a beam energy of 39.5A MeV have been measured with the photon spectrometer TAPS. The kinetic energy and transverse momentum spectra of neutral pions cannot be properl
y described in the framework of the thermal model, nor when the reabsorption of pions is accounted for in a phenomenological model. However, high energy and high momentum tails of the pion spectra can be well fitted through thermal distributions with unexpectedly soft temperature parameters below 10 MeV.
