This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(August 2023) |
The NA48 experiment was a series of particle physics experiments in the field of kaon physics being carried out at the North Area of the Super Proton Synchrotron at CERN. The collaboration involved over 100 physicists mostly from Western Europe and Russia.
The construction of the NA48 experimental setup took place early 1990s. The primary physics goal – the search for direct CP violation – was inherited from the predecessor NA31 experiment. The physics data taking runs took place between 1997 and 2001. The discovery of the phenomenon of direct CP violation, one of the most important experimental results obtained at CERN, was announced by the collaboration in 1999. The publication of the final result was made in 2001. In addition the experiment made a contribution to studies of rare decays of neutral kaons.
The following stage of the experiment (NA48/1) was carried out in 2002 and was devoted to high precision study of rare decays of neutral kaons and hyperons. The next stage (NA48/2) was carried out in 2003–2004 and was dedicated to a large programme of studies of properties of charged kaons, including the search of direct CP violation, studies of rare decays of the charged kaon, and low-energy QCD using final state rescattering.
The successor of NA48 is the NA62 experiment, which started data collection in 2015 and is dedicated to further studies of rare decays of the charged kaon.
In particle physics, a kaon, also called a K meson and denoted
K
, is any of a group of four mesons distinguished by a quantum number called strangeness. In the quark model they are understood to be bound states of a strange quark and an up or down antiquark.
The BaBar experiment, or simply BaBar, is an international collaboration of more than 500 physicists and engineers studying the subatomic world at energies of approximately ten times the rest mass of a proton (~10 GeV). Its design was motivated by the investigation of charge-parity violation. BaBar is located at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, which is operated by Stanford University for the Department of Energy in California.
Gargamelle was a heavy liquid bubble chamber detector in operation at CERN between 1970 and 1979. It was designed to detect neutrinos and antineutrinos, which were produced with a beam from the Proton Synchrotron (PS) between 1970 and 1976, before the detector was moved to the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). In 1979 an irreparable crack was discovered in the bubble chamber, and the detector was decommissioned. It is currently part of the "Microcosm" exhibition at CERN, open to the public.
Jack Steinberger was a German-born American physicist noted for his work with neutrinos, the subatomic particles considered to be elementary constituents of matter. He was a recipient of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Leon M. Lederman and Melvin Schwartz, for the discovery of the muon neutrino. Through his career as an experimental particle physicist, he held positions at the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University (1950–68), and the CERN (1968–86). He was also a recipient of the United States National Medal of Science in 1988, and the Matteucci Medal from the Italian Academy of Sciences in 1990.
The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) is a particle accelerator of the synchrotron type at CERN. It is housed in a circular tunnel, 6.9 kilometres (4.3 mi) in circumference, straddling the border of France and Switzerland near Geneva, Switzerland.
The Belle experiment was a particle physics experiment conducted by the Belle Collaboration, an international collaboration of more than 400 physicists and engineers, at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation (KEK) in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. The experiment ran from 1999 to 2010.
Jonathan Richard Ellis is a British theoretical physicist who is currently Clerk Maxwell Professor of Theoretical Physics at King's College London.
T2K is a particle physics experiment studying the oscillations of the accelerator neutrinos. The experiment is conducted in Japan by the international cooperation of about 500 physicists and engineers with over 60 research institutions from several countries from Europe, Asia and North America and it is a recognized CERN experiment (RE13). T2K collected data within its first phase of operation from 2010 till 2021. The second phase of data taking (T2K-II) is expected to start in 2023 and last until commencement of the successor of T2K – the Hyper-Kamiokande experiment in 2027.
The NA58 experiment, or COMPASS is a 60-metre-long fixed-target experiment at the M2 beam line of the SPS at CERN. The experimental hall is located at the CERN North Area, close to the French village of Prévessin-Moëns. The experiment is a two-staged spectrometer with numerous tracking detectors, particle identification and calorimetry. The physics results are extracted by recording and analysing the final states of the scattering processes. The versatile set-up, the use of different targets and particle beams allow the investigation of various processes. The main physics goals are the investigation of the nucleon spin structure and hadron spectroscopy. The collaboration consists of 220 physicists from 13 different countries, involving 28 universities and research institutes.
Danilo Zavrtanik is a Slovenian physicist and professor.
In particle physics, CP violation is a violation of CP-symmetry : the combination of C-symmetry and P-symmetry. CP-symmetry states that the laws of physics should be the same if a particle is interchanged with its antiparticle (C-symmetry) while its spatial coordinates are inverted. The discovery of CP violation in 1964 in the decays of neutral kaons resulted in the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1980 for its discoverers James Cronin and Val Fitch.
The NA62 experiment is a fixed-target particle physics experiment in the North Area of the SPS accelerator at CERN. The experiment was approved in February 2007. Data taking began in 2015, and the experiment is expected to become the first in the world to probe the decays of the charged kaon with probabilities down to 10−12. The experiment's spokesperson is Cristina Lazzeroni. The collaboration involves 333 individuals from 30 institutions and 13 countries around the world.
OKA is a particle physics detector experiment at the U-70 accelerator in the Institute for High Energy Physics located in Protvino near Moscow (Russia). OKA is specialized experiment with separated charge kaons beam.
NA31 is a CERN experiment which was proposed in 1982 as a "Measurement of |η00 /η+-|2 by the CERN-Edinburgh-Mainz-Pisa-Siegen collaboration. It took data between 1986 and 1989, using a proton beam from the SPS through the K4 neutral beam-line. Its aim was to experimentally prove direct CP-violation.
Maria Fidecaro is an Italian experimental physicist with a focus on particle physics. She has spent most of her career at CERN, where she today has the status of honorary member of the personnel.
Mayda Velasco is a physicist and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern University. She works in experimental particle physics and is a leading member of the CMS Collaboration at the CERN LHC. She founded COFI and is its first director. She is a pioneer in the physics potential of photon colliders.
The CPLEAR experiment used the antiproton beam of the LEAR facility - Low-Energy Antiproton Ring which operated at CERN from 1982 to 1996 - to produce neutral kaons through proton-antiproton annihilation in order to study CP, T and CPT violation in the neutral kaon system.
]
Bradley Cox is an American physicist, academic and researcher. He is a Professor of Physics and the founder of the High Energy Physics Group at the University of Virginia.