Today’s view on strangeness

There are several different experimental indications, such as the pion-nucleon Σ term and polarized deep-inelastic scattering, which suggest that the nucleon wave function contains a hidden $s {\bar s}$ component. This is expected in chiral soliton models, which also predicted the existence of new exotic baryons that may recently have been observed. Another hint of hidden strangeness in the nucleon is provided by copious φ production in various $N {\bar N}$ annihilation channels, which may be due to evasions of the Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka rule. One way to probe the possible polarization of hidden $s {\bar s}$ pairs in the nucleon may be via Λ polarization in deep-inelastic scattering.PACS: 12.39.Dc Skyrmions – 13.75.Cs Nucleon-nucleon interactions – 14.20.-c Baryons CERN-PH-TH/2004-231 hep-ph/041136