Antiproton--proton annihilation into pion pairs within effective meson theory

Antiproton--proton annihilation into light mesons is revisited in the few GeV energy domain, in view of a global description of the existing data. An effective meson model is developed, with mesonic and baryonic degrees od freedom in $s$, $t$, and $u$ channels. Regge factors are added to reproduce the proper energy behavior and the forward and backward peaked behavior. A comparison with existing data and predictions for angular distributions and energy dependence are done for charged and neutral pion pair production.