Accordingtothenaiveconstituentquarkmodel,the?mesonisbelievedtobeanalmostpuressstate,whilethereareonlyupanddownquarks(antiquarks)inthenucleon(antinucleon).Thusthepp!??reaction,withitsdisconnectedquarklines,shouldbesuppressedaccordingtotheOkubo-Zeig-Iizuka(OZI)rule.However,eventheOZIruleisstrictlyenforcedbynature,theppreactioncanstillproceedthroughthenon-strangequarkcomponentofthe?meson,becauseoftheslightdiscrepancyfromtheidealmixingofthevectormesonsingletandoctet[1].Withthissmalldiscrepancy,onecandetermineanupperlimitforthetotalcrosssectionofpp!??reactionbycomparisontothetotalcrosssectionoftherelatedpp!ωωreaction.Thisyieldsacrosssectionforpp!??attheorderof10nb.However,theexperimentalresultshowedthatthecrosssectionat1.2GeVincidentanti-protonmomentum,=2.860.46μb,istwoordersofmagnitudelargerthantheestimatedvalue.Hence,thepp!??reactionhasattractedmuchattentionbecauseofthelargeviolationoftheOZIrule.
