Flavor production in bar pp reactions at low energies

Associated production processes have been known since the 1050's. The solution to the puzzle they presented was to introduce the 'strangeness' quantum number, along with the notion of its conservation in strong interactions. For example, the reaction π+n → K+Λ is described both as the t-channel exchange of a K0 meson, ans as an s-channel process involving the annihilation of a d bar d quark pair and the subsequent production of an s bar s pair. This basic 'flavor-production' process and ones like it are the focus of widespread interest and the subject of this talk. The physics to be addressed is the nature of the quark annihilation and the creation process, which is expected to proceed according to the rules of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). According to these ideas, it will be dominated by perturbative QCD (essentially single-gluon exchange) at high momentum; at low momentum the process is expected to involve a very complicated multiple gluon exchange since it is in the nonperturbative regime