Strange hyperon and antihyperon production from quark and string-rope matter

Hyperon and antihyperon production is investigated using two microscopical models: (1) the fast hadronization of quark matter as given by the ALCOR model; (2) string formation and fragmentation as in the HIJING/B model. We calculate the particle numbers and momentum distributions for Pb + Pb collisions at CERN SPS energies in order to compare the two models with each other and with available experimental data. We show that these two theoretical approaches give similar yields for the hyperons, but strongly differ for antihyperons.