Exploring the potential of antihyperons in nuclei with antiprotons

A simple method to explore the interaction of antihyperons in nuclei by exclusive hyperon–antihyperon pair production close to threshold in antiproton nucleus interactions is proposed. Due to energy and momentum conservation event-by-event transverse momentum correlations of the produced hyperons and antihyperons contain information on the difference between their potentials. A schematic Monte Carlo simulation is used to illustrate the sensitivities of the proposed method for the reaction 1.66 GeV/c  p¯C12→ΛΛ¯. For produced D-meson pairs at 6.7 GeV/c the sensitivity of the transverse momenta correlation will probably be too small to deduce differences between the potentials for D+ and D− mesons. However, for ΞΞ¯ pairs produced at 2.9 GeV/c   the asymmetry is sufficiently sensitive to predicted differences between the Ξ and Ξ¯ potentials.