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Kaon Pair Production in Proton--Proton Collisions
The differential and total cross sections for kaon pair production in the
pp->ppK+K- reaction have been measured at three beam energies of 2.65, 2.70,
and 2.83 GeV using the ANKE magnetic spectrometer at the COSY-Juelich
accelerator. These near-threshold data are separated into pairs arising from
the decay of the phi-meson and the remainder. For the non-phi selection, the
ratio of the differential cross sections in terms of the K-p and K+p invariant
masses is strongly peaked towards low masses. This effect can be described
quantitatively by using a simple ansatz for the K-p final state interaction,
where it is seen that the data are sensitive to the magnitude of an effective
K-p scattering length. When allowance is made for a small number of phi events
where the K- rescatters from the proton, the phi region is equally well
described at all three energies. A very similar phenomenon is discovered in the
ratio of the cross sections as functions of the K-pp and K+pp invariant masses
and the identical final state interaction model is also very successful here.
The world data on the energy dependence of the non-phi total cross section is
also reproduced, except possibly for the results closest to threshold.Comment: 12 two-column pages, 12 figures, 1 tabl