Neutral strange particle production in neutrino and antineutrino charged-current interactions on neon

A study has been made of neutral strange particle production in νμNe and ν̄μNe charged-current interactions at a higher energy than any previous study. The experiment was done at the Fermilab Tevatron using the 15-ft. bubble chamber, and the data sample consists of 814(154) observed neutral strange particles from 6263(1115) ν(ν̄) charged-current events. For the ν beam (average event energy Eν=150 GeV), the average multiplicities per charged-current event have been measured to be 0.408±0.048 for K0, 0.127±0.014 for Λ, and 0.015±0.005 for Λ̄, which are significantly greater than for lower-energy experiments. The dependence of rates on kinematical variables has been measured, and shows that both K0 and Λ production increase strongly with Eν, W2, Q2, and yB. Compared to lower-energy experiments, single-particle distributions indicate that there is much more K0 production for xF>-0.2, and the enhanced Λ production spans most of the kinematic region. Λ̄ production is mostly in the region xF<0.3. The Lund model is shown to be in qualitative agreement with the data, but does not reproduce single-particle distributions in detail. For xF>-0.2 there is a significant excess of Λ production over the model's prediction. The Λ hyperons are found to be polarized in the production plane.