Final State Interactions and Polarization Observables in the Reaction pp → pKΛ

Abstract

Due to the lack of high quality hyperon beams, final state interactions in hyperon production reactions are a compelling tool to study hyperon-nucleon interactions. The COSY-TOF experiment has recently been upgraded in order to reconstruct the pK+Λ final state with sufficient precision to determine the spin triplet pΛ scattering length with a polarized proton beam. We find an unexpected behavior of the K+ analyzing power which prevents the extraction method to be used with the available statistics. A theoretical explanation is pending. Furthermore, the polarized beam together with the self analyzing decay of the Λ allows us to determine the Λ depolarization. This is especially sensitive to K+ and π exchange in the production mechanism. Our finding verifies, to a large extent, the result from DISTO [2] that has so far been the only measurement close to the production threshold.