Particle-Antiparticle Asymmetries of $\Lambda$ Production in Hadron-Nucleon Collisions

Abstract

The particle-antiparticle asymmetries of $\Lambda$ production in 250 GeV/c $\pi^{\pm}$, $K^{\pm}$, and $p$ --nucleon collisions are studied with two model parametrizations of quark to $\Lambda$ fragmentation functions. It is shown that the available data can be qualitatively explained by the calculated results in both the quark-diquark model and a pQCD based analysis of fragmentation functions. The differences in the two model predictions are significant for $K^{\pm}$ beams, and high precision measurements of the asymmetries with detailed $x_F$ and $P_T$ information can discriminate between different predictions.Comment: 14 LaTex pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Lett.