pi -N correlations probe the nuclear equation of state in relativistic heavy-ion collisions.

We investigate the sensitivity of pionic bounce{oo and squeeze{out on the density and momentum dependence of the real part of the nucleon optical potential. For the in{plane pion bounce{oo we nd a strong sensitivity on both the density and momentum dependence whereas the out{of{plane pion squeeze{out shows a strong sensitivity only towards the momentum dependence but little sensitivity towards the density dependence. We observe strong diierences between calculations including the nucleon optical potential and CASCADE calculations. The question of validity of the CASCADE approach in relativistic heavy ion collisions can be resolved experimentally supported by GSI, BMFT and DFG