The internal structure of nucleons and interactions between their components have been debated
ever since the existence of quarks was postulated. A lot of experimental evidence has been
gathered, indicating that nucleons and their excited states are not simple static quark states but
are significantly influenced by the dynamics of baryon-meson interactions. In this context it is
interesting to extend internal structure studies to hyperons, particles where one light quark of a
nucleon is replaced by a heavier strange quark, e.g. Λ, Σ or Σ+ (1385), or excited states such as:
Λ(1520) or Λ(1405). Many competing models, including also those based on the dynamical state
generation, try to describe the internal structure of these hyperons. The predictions are sensitive
to e.g. relative widths of radiative decays of hyperons. In order to discriminate between models,
it is helpful to measure radiative decays (with emission of a 𝛾 or 𝑒+𝑒− pairs) and hadronic decays,
e.g. Λ(1520) → Σ+ (1385) 𝜋− , Λ(1405) → Σ 𝜋. These decays are largely unexplored at present
and are the motivation for the project presented in this talk.
The goal of this project is to study the production of Σ+ (1385), Λ(1520) and Λ(1405) hyperons
produced in proton-proton at beam energies ranging from 3.5 GeV to 4.5 GeV with HADES
detector at FAIR. The analysis described in this work is a first step in this direction and presents
results of Σ+ (1385) production in p + p at 3.5 GeV.