In this paper we present the R&D activity on a new GEM-based TPC prototype for AMADEUS, a new experimental proposal at the DA{Phi}NE {Phi}-factory at the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati (INFN), aiming to perform measurements of the low-energy negati
ve kaons interactions in nuclei. Such innovative detector will equip the inner part of the experiment in order to perfom a better reconstruction of the primary vertex and the secondary particles tracking. A 10x10 cm2 prototype with a drift gap up to 15 cm was realized and succesfully tested at the {pi} M1 beam facility of the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) with low momentum hadrons. The measurements of the detector efficiency and spatial resolution have been performed. The results as a function of the gas gain, drift field, front-end electronic threshold and particle momentum are reported and discussed.
The branching ratio for the decay $K^+ to pi^+ ubar{ u}$ is sensitive to new physics; the NA62 experiment will measure it to within about 10%. To reject the dominant background from channels with final state photons, the large-angle vetoes (LAVs) mus
t detect particles with better than 1 ns time resolution and 10% energy resolution over a very large energy range. Our custom readout board uses a time-over-threshold discriminator coupled to a TDC as a straightforward solution to satisfy these requirements. A prototype of the readout system was extensively tested together with the ANTI-A2 large angle veto module at CERN in summer 2010.
