The exclusive production of hyperon-antihyperon pairs close to their
production threshold in antiproton - nucleus collisions offers a unique and
hitherto unexplored opportunity to elucidate the behaviour of antihyperons in
nuclei. For the first time we analyse these reactions in a microscopic
transport model using the the Gie\ss en Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck transport
model. The calculation take the delicate interplay between the strong
absorption of antihyperons, their rescattering and refraction at the nuclear
surface as well as the Fermi motion of the struck nucleon into account. We find
a substantial sensitivity of transverse momentum correlations of coincident
ΛΛ-pairs to the assumed depth of the
Λ-potential. Because of the high cross section for this
process and the simplicity of the experimental method our results are highly
relevant for future activities at the international Facility for Antiproton and
Ion Research (FAIR)