Neutral Strange Particle Production in Neutrino Interactions at Tevatron Energies.

This thesis reports on a study of neutral strange particle production by high energy muon-neutrinos. The neutrinos were produced from a 800 GeV proton beam-dump at Fermilab. Neutrino events were observed using a hybrid bubble chamber detector system. The data contained deep inelastic neutrino-nucleon interactions with an average momentum transfer < Q^2> = 23 (GeV/c)^2. Rates for K^0 and Lambda production in neutrino and anti-neutrino charged current events are presented. The distributions of these particles in Feynman x and rapidity are also studied. Significant differences were observed in the production mechanism for the K^0 meson and the Lambda baryon. The production rates of K^0 's were observed to increase with energy, whereas the rates for Lambda production remained essentially constant. In Feynman x, the K^0 's were produced in the central region and the Lambda's were produced backwards. The data are compared with the LUND monte carlo for string fragmentation. In the monte carlo, K^0 's are mostly produced from s| s pair production during fragmentation. The Lambda's are generally produced through recombination with the diquark from the target nucleon. The data agree with this model for strange particle production. The data are also compared with experimental results at lower energies.