No Arabic abstract
Three events for the decay K+ => pi+,nu,nubar have been observed in the pion momentum region below the K+ => pi+,pi0 peak, 140 < P_pi < 199 MeV/c, with an estimated background of 0.93+-0.17(stat.)+0.32-0.24(syst.) events. Combining this observation with previously reported results yields a branching ratio of B(K+ => pi+,nu,nubar) = (1.73+1.15-1.05)e-10 consistent with the standard model prediction.
The PEN Collaboration is conducting a new measurement of the pi+ -> e+ nu branching ratio at the Paul Scherrer Institute, with the goal uncertainty of delta B/B(pie2)=5E-4 or lower. At present, the combined accuracy of all published pie2 decay measurements lags behind the theoretical calculation by a factor of 40. In this contribution we report on the PEN detector configuration and its performance during two development runs done in 2007 and 2008.
The results and goals of experiments E787, E949, CKM and KOPIO on the measurement of the branching fractions of K+ -> pi+,nu,nubar and K0L -> pi0,nu,nubar are presented.
A search for additional evidence for the rare kaon decay K^+ --> pi^+ nu nubar has been made with a new data set comparable in sensitivity to the previous exposure that produced a single event.
The first search for the decay K^+ -> pi^+ pi^0 nu nubar has been performed with the E787 detector at BNL. Based on zero events observed in the kinematical search region defined by 90 MeV/c < P_{pi^+} < 188 MeV/c and 135 MeV < E_{pi^0} < 180 MeV, an upper limit B(K^+ -> pi^+ pi^0 nu nubar) < 4.3 x 10^{-5} at 90% confidence level is established.
E865 at the Brookhaven National Laboratory AGS collected about 70,000 K+(e3) events to measure the K+(e3) branching ratio relative to the observed K+ -> pi+ pi0, K+ -> pi0 mu+ nu, and K+ -> pi+ pi0 decays. The pi0 in all the decays was detected using the e+e- pair from pi0 -> e+e-gamma decay and no photons were required. Using the Particle Data Group branching ratios for the normalization decays we obtain BR(K+(e3(gamma))=(5.13+/-0.02(stat)+/-0.09(sys)+/-0.04(norm))%, where $K+(e3(gamma)) includes the effect of virtual and real photons. This result is 2.3 sigma higher than the current Particle Data Group value. The implications of this result for the $V_{us}$ element of the CKM matrix, and the matrixs unitarity are discussed.