Comparison of strange antibaryon and strange meson production in K p interactions at 32 GeV/c.

New experimental results are presented on inclusive production properties of $$\bar \Sigma ^{ * + } $$ (1385) and $$\bar \Sigma ^{ * + } $$ (1385) in K p interactions at 32 GeV/c. The analysis is based on significantly larger statistics than previously available. A comparison is also made of invariant x-distributions of K/ $$\bar K^0 $$ , $$\bar \Lambda $$ and $$\bar \Xi ^ + $$ and of $$\bar \Sigma ^{ * \pm } $$ (1385) and K(892). These spectra exhibit regularities expected from the quark-recombination picture when it is assumed that the strange mesons and antibaryons are produced off the strange $$\bar s$$ -valence-quark in the incident K meson. Transverse momentum distributions are also presented for K(892) and $$\bar \Sigma ^{ * \pm } $$ (1385) and found to be very similar. The results on strange antibaryon average multiplicities disagree strongly with a recent version of the additive quark model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]