Energy Dependence of the pp->ppK+K- Total Cross Section Close to Threshold

Abstract

The strangeness dissociation in the elementary nucleon-nucleon scattering via the pp->ppK+K- reaction is of fundamental interest.
At the COSY-11 installation, a first preliminary absolute total cross section value of 2.1 (± 0.8) nb at an excess energy of Q=17 MeV has recently been determined from a total of 60 identified events. In order to continue studies on the energy dependence of the total cross section close to threshold at two different excess energies we request five weeks of beam time in total, two weeks during the second half of 2000.

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