  The production of strange particles (kaons, hyperons) and hypernuclei in
light charged particle induced reactions in the energy range of a few GeV (2-15
GeV) has become a topic of active research in several facilities (e.g., HypHI
and PANDA at GSI and/or FAIR (Germany), JLab (USA), and JPARC (Japan)). This
energy range represents the low-energy limit of the string models (degree of
freedom: quark and gluon) or the high-energy limit of the so-called spallation
models (degree of freedom: hadrons). A well known spallation model is INCL, the
Li\`ege intranuclear cascade model (combined with a de-excitation model to
complete the reaction). INCL, known to give good results up to 2-3 GeV, was
recently upgraded by the implementation of multiple pion emission to extend the
energy range of applicability up to roughly 15 GeV. The next step, to account
also for strange particle production, both for refining the high energy domain
and making it usable when strangeness appears, requires the following main
ingredients: i) the relevant elementary cross sections (production, scattering,
and absorption) and ii) the characteristics of the associated final states.
Some of those ingredients are already known and, sometimes, are already used in
models of the same type (e.g., Bertini, GiBUU), but this paper aims at
reviewing the situation by compiling, updating, and comparing the necessary
elementary information which are independent of the model used.
