¯N interaction from meson-exchange and quark-gluon dynamics

We investigate the ˉN interaction at low energies using a meson exchange model supplemented with a short-distance contribution from one-gluon exchange. The model is developed in close analogy to the meson-exchange KN interaction of the Jülich group utilizing SU(4) symmetry constraints. The main ingredients of the interaction are provided by vector meson (ρ , ω exchange and higher-order box diagrams involving ˉ^* N , ˉΔ , and ˉ^*Δ intermediate states. The short-range part is assumed to receive additional contributions from genuine quark-gluon processes. The predicted cross-sections for ˉN for excess energies up to 150MeV are of the same order of magnitude as those for KN but with average values of around 20mb, roughly a factor two larger than for the latter system. It is found that the ω -exchange plays a very important role. Its interference pattern with the ρ -exchange, which is basically fixed by the assumed SU(4) symmetry, clearly determines the qualitative features of the ˉN interaction --very similiar to what happens also for the KN system.