DOUBLE STRANGENESS PRODUCTION IN ANTIPROTON ANNIHILATION ON NUCLEI

The recent data on double strangeness production after antiproton annihilation on nuclei are analyzed within the conventional picture of the reaction, namely annihilation on a single nucleon, followed by rescattering of the products in the nucleus, assumed to proceed in a hadronic phase. General expressions for single and double strangeness are derived within this picture. The relevant parameters are determined, as far as possible, from the single strangeness production yields and are used to predict double strangeness production yields. The later are compared with experiment and found consistent with the conventional picture. However, the data seem to indicate that the strangeness production in the primordial annihilation is different from what it is in nucleon-antinucleon reactions. An estimate of the THETA production rate is also performed. It is shown that the latter is much less sensitive to the rescattering process than in the LAMBDA production case.