Antiproton-proton annihilation into charged pion and kaon pairs from 0.7 to 2.4 GeV/c

A counter-spark-chamber experiment has been performed to measure the annihilation reactions p̄p π+π and p̄p K+K in the energy region 0.7-2.4 GeV/c. The angular region covered in the experiment was 0.65≤cosθc.m.≤1.0. The data were taken in order to study heavy bosons (mass greater than two nucleons) that might couple to the p̄p system. Our data have been combined with data from a previous BNL-Caltech experiment to give complete folded angular distributions and total cross sections for these reactions at 12 incident momenta. The folded two-pion annihilation data have been fitted by a simple Breit-Wigner resonance model in order to explore possible resonance behavior. The extreme-angle data have been interpreted in terms of particle exchanges, and through crossing symmetry comparisons are made with backward π p and K p scattering. © 1973 The American Physical Society.