Baryon Transport in Dual Models and the Possibility of a Backward Peak in Diffraction

Abstract

We begin to briefly survey the experimental and conceptual side of baryon transfers in particle scattering. A discussion of baryon transfers in heavy ion scattering follows. It shortly reviews existing string model concepts, which were found to be consistent with the data. With this motivation we turn to a more careful consideration of the relevant topological structures. The baryon transfer is associated with one of two possible cuts in baryonium exchange. From the color structure the baryonium can be identified with an Odderon exchange. We conjecture that the two Odderon cuts occur with an opposite sign and partially cancel. As the Odderon is predicted to have a rather high trajectory it has to involve small coupling constants. As this suppression is not anticipated for diffractive processes a tiny observable backward peak is argued to occur in the initial baryon distribution in massive diffractive systems.