Quark and diquark fragmentation into strange particles in. pi. /sup -/p interactions at p = 40 GeV/c

Quark and diquark fragmentation into neutral kaons and ..lambda.. hyperons in soft hadron-hadron interactions is studied. The fragmentation functions (1/..beta..)(dsigma/dx/sub E/) are analyzed. The results are compared to the analogous data on e/sup +/e/sup -/ interactions. It is shown that in hadron-hadron collisions, in diquark fragmentation processes the function (1/..beta..)(dsigma/dx/sub E/) displays scaling behavior for netural kaons and ..lambda.. hyperons in the momentum range 16--405 GeV/c within the experimental error. The x/sub E/ dependence of the functions describing the fragmentation of quarks and diquarks into neutral kaons and ..lambda.. hyperons in soft ..pi../sup -/p and pp collisions has the same behavior as that in e/sup +/e/sup -/ annihilation. The coefficients describing the suppression of strange s(s-bar) quark (lambda/sub s/) pickup and diquark (lambda/sub q/q) pickup from the sea are found to be lambda/sub s/approx. =0.17 and lambda/sub q/q = 0.14 +- 0.03. The results obtained indicate that quark and diquark fragmentation into strange particles in soft hadron-hadron collisions and in e/sup +/e/sup -/ interactions is universal.