  The inclusive pion double charge exchange (DCX) on oxygen nuclei has been
measured in the region where additional pion production is kinematically
forbidden. The experiment was performed at ITEP PS at incident pi- kinetic
energies T_0= 0.59, 0.75 and 1.1 GeV. The integrated forward differential cross
section was found to decrease with energy slowly. At 1.1 GeV it exceeds the
theoretical prediction within the conventional sequential single charge
exchange mechanism with a neutral pion in the intermediate state (Glauber
elastic rescattering) by about half an order of magnitude. The sequential
mechanism with two pions in the intermediate state (Glauber inelastic
rescatterings), which was proposed recently, seems to be able to explain the
observed slow energy dependence and allows to predict the DCX cross section for
higher energies.
