The Kaon identification system at the NA62 experiment at CERN

TL;DR

The paper describes the kaon identification system used in the NA62 experiment at CERN, which is crucial for accurately measuring the rare decay of kaons amidst a high-rate hadron beam.

Contribution

It presents the design and performance of the kaon identification system specifically developed for the NA62 experiment.

Findings

Effective kaon identification reduces background noise.

System achieves high efficiency in kaon detection.

Supports precise measurement of rare kaon decay.

Abstract

The NA62 experiment at CERN SPS aims to measure the branching ratio of the ultra-rare kaon decay $K^+\to\pi^+\nu\bar{\nu}$ with 10\% precision, collecting $\sim 100$ events, assuming the Standard Model~(SM) branching ratio of $8.4 \times 10^{-11}$, starting in 2016. The NA62 experiment uses a kaon decay-in-flight technique and is exposed to a 750~MHz high-energy unseparated charged hadron beam, in which kaons are a minor component (6\%). Kaon identification is therefore mandatory to reduce the interference of the dominant non-kaon component with the experimental measurements. The NA62 kaon identification system and its performances are presented.