Double-strangeness production with antiprotons

Abstract

The production of double-strangeness by antiproton annihilation in nuclei will be an exciting way to investigate whether the formation of deeply bound antikaonic nuclear clusters occurs. The existence of deeply bound antikaonic nuclear clusters is a lively debated problem in hadron physics today, which can be solved only experimentally. At CERN with the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) and in future with the new FAIR facility at Darmstadt low energy antiprotons are available to perform this type of experiments. The use of antiprotons for the production of double-strangeness was recently discussed by Weise and Kienle and indeed, it would be very challenging to produce and study such “double-strange nuclei” in the view of the prediction of Akaishi and Yamazaki that double-antikaon bound nuclear systems with strangeness (S = − 2) will be formed with binding energies up to 200–300 MeV. Such binding energies might result in an increase of the average density to more than 3 times the average nuclear density. If such dense systems are created, conditions in the phase diagram might be reached where phase transition to kaon condensation or colour superconductivity will occur at low temperature.