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 eventby-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 pC → ΛΛ. For produced D-meson pairs at 6.7 GeV/c the sensitivity of the transverse momenta correlation will probably be to 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.