Hyperon99 experimental summary: A 40 year perspective

The Hyperon 99 Symposium was held in a very timely fashion and place. Fermilab is likely making the last 800 GeV fixed target run for a very long time. As has been true since Fermilab began, hyperon physics continues to play an important role in the fixed target program. Both of the active fixed target experiments, KTeV and HyperCP, have strong hyperon physics programs, and both have reported results at this symposium. In addition, it should be pointed out that both experiments have strong kaon physics programs. This linkage of kaons and hyperons is, of course, not coincidental, but mirrors the gradual discovery of strangeness through associated production of kaons and hyperons in the early 1950's. As an overview of the long history of hyperon physics, Vince Smith gave a very thorough presentation of the CERN hyperon physics program and showed how it relates to the work done at Brookhaven and Fermilab. The author has arranged this summary in five sections. The first three correspond to the way in which hyperons are studied: they exist (with static properties such as mass and lifetime), they are produced (with production properties such as polarization) and they decay (with decay properties such as form factors). The author then summarizes some of the data presented at the symposium reflecting strangeness in other baryonic forms of matter than the standard hyperon. In the last section, this paper summarizes important future measurements which should be taken in the field of hyperon physics.