Antiproton-proton annihilation into charged light meson pairs within effective meson theory

We revisit antiproton-proton annihilation into light mesons in the energy domain relevant to the antiproton annihilation at Darmstadt (PANDA) experiment at the GSI Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) [2.25(1.5) <= root s(pL) <= 5.47(15) GeV (GeV/c) where root s(pL) is the total energy (the beam momentum in the laboratory frame)]. An effective meson model is developed, with mesonic and baryonic degrees of freedom. Form factors are added to take into account the composite nature of the interacting hadrons. A comparison is made with the existing data for charged pion pair production and predictions for angular distributions and energy dependence in the range 3.362(5) <= root s(pL) <= 4.559(10.1) GeV (GeV/c). The model is applied to pi(+/-) p elastic scattering, using crossing symmetry, and to charged kaon pair production, on the basis of SU(3) symmetry. In all cases the results illustrate a nice agreement with the data.