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Strangeness suppression of qq creation observed in exclusive reactions
journal contribution
posted on 2014-12-09, 00:00 authored by M. D. Mestayer, K. Park, A. Biselli, W. I. Levine, Curtis MeyerCurtis Meyer, Reinhard A. Schumacher, Brian Vernarsky, CLAS CollaborationWe measured the ratios of electroproduction cross sections from a proton target for three exclusive meson-baryon final states: ΛK(+), pπ(0), and nπ(+), with the CLAS detector at Jefferson Lab. Using a simple model of quark hadronization, we extract qq creation probabilities for the first time in exclusive two-body production, in which only a single qq pair is created. We observe a sizable suppression of strange quark-antiquark pairs compared to nonstrange pairs, similar to that seen in high-energy production.