Strange particle production mechanisms in proton—Proton collisions at RHIC

We present data on strange particle production in elementary proton-proton collisions at RHIC energies. Comparison to leading order and next-to-leading order (NLO) calculations shows that the fragmentation process is flavor dependent and that higher order corrections are needed to describe all spectra, in particular at these collision energies, which are modest compared to those at the Tevatron. A model (EPOS) which takes into account multiple scattering between projectile constituents seems to describe the data best.