Statistical treatment of annihilation processes

Abstract

We present a detailed statistical model for describing annihilation reactions initiated by $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ and $\overline{p}p$ collisions. Charged and total multiplicities, fractional prong cross sections, and the ${\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}{\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}$ production cross section are calculated and compared with experiment. It is argued that the model is valid in the few-GeV energy region and the agreement between theory and experiment is good here.