EXPLAINING CENTAURO EVENTS BY FORMATION OF PIONS IN THE ISOSPIN SINGLET CHANNEL

Peculiar cosmic ray events (Centauros) with anomalously large fluctuat ions in their isospin composition have been observed during the past t wenty years. Multiparticle symmetrization has been put forward as an e xplanation of the effect. In this Letter we show how the formation of pions through the sigma channel when combined with symmetrization can lead to a scenario where the isospin distribution is not only broadene d but inverted. For reasonable choices of parameters we find that even ts can actually prefer consisting of either nearly all neutral or all charged pions.