Search for exotic baryons with hidden strangeness in diffractive production processes

Experimental results of the SPHINX Collaboration on studying proton diffrac tive production processes are presented. Evidences for new baryon states wi th masses greater than or similar to 2 GeV were obtained in hyperon-kaon ef fective mass spectra in several reactions. Unusual properties of these:mass ive states (small enough decay widths, large branching ratios for their dec ays with strange particles in final states) make them serious candidates fo r cryptoexotic pentaquark baryons with hidden strangeness \ qqqs (s) over b ar]. New results for these states are presented here, as well as recent dat a on large violation of the OZI rule in proton diffractive dissociation. (C ) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.