Production of cascade hypernuclei via the (K-, K+) reaction within a quark-meson coupling model

We study the production of bound hypernuclei Be-12(Xi-) and Mg-28(Xi-) via the (K-, K+) reaction on C-12 and Si-28 targets, respectively, within a covariant effective Lagrangian model, employing Xi bound state spinors derived from the latest quark-meson coupling model as well as Dirac single-particle wave functions. The K+ Xi(-) production vertex is described by excitation, propagation and decay of Lambda and Sigma resonance states in the initial collision of a K- meson with a target proton in the incident channel. The parameters of the resonance vertices are fixed by describing the available data on total and differential cross sections for the p(K-, K+)Xi(-) reaction. We find that both the elementary and hypemuclear production cross sections are dominated by the contributions from the Lambda(1520) intermediate resonant state. The 0 degrees differential cross sections for the formation of simple s-state Xi(-) particle-hole states peak at a beam momentum around 1.0 GeV/c, with a value in excess of 1 mu b. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.