Roll of the pion sea of the nucleon in production of mesons with hidden flavor (phi, J/psi, UPSILON)

The contribution of the pion-exchange mechanism to the hadroproduction of mesons with hidden flavor (phi, J/psi, psi', UPSILON) is discussed. The differential cross sections for production of these mesons in πN collisions are parametrized. The parton interpretation of the model and in particular the parton composition of the pion cloud of the nucleon are discussed. The question of production of mesons with hidden flavor in association with particles carrying explicit flavor, and the related question of overlap of pion-exchange diagrams with each other, are discussed. The results of calculations of the cross sections for production of phi, J/psi, psi', and UPSILON mesons in nucleon-nucleon collisions are given, and a method is proposed for separation of the contributions of the mechanisms of quark-antiquark annihilation and gluon-gluon fusion in these processes