Hadrontherapy is an emerging technique in cancer therapy that uses beams of charged particles. To meet the improved capability of hadrontherapy in matching the dose release with the cancer position, new dose monitoring techniques need to be developed
and introduced into clinical use. The measurement of the fluxes of the secondary particles produced by the hadron beam is of fundamental importance in the design of any dose monitoring device and is eagerly needed to tune Monte Carlo simulations. We report the measurements done with charged secondary particles produced from the interaction of a 80 MeV/u fully stripped carbon ion beam at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Sud, Catania, with a Poly-methyl methacrylate target. Charged secondary particles, produced at 90$degree$ with respect to the beam axis, have been tracked with a drift chamber, while their energy and time of flight has been measured by means of a LYSO scintillator. Secondary protons have been identified exploiting the energy and time of flight information, and their emission region has been reconstructed backtracking from the drift chamber to the target. Moreover a position scan of the target indicates that the reconstructed emission region follows the movement of the expected Bragg peak position. Exploting the reconstruction of the emission region, an accuracy on the Bragg peak determination in the submillimeter range has been obtained. The measured differential production rate for protons produced with $E^{rm Prod}_{rm kin} >$ 83 MeV and emitted at 90$degree$ with respect to the beam line is: $dN_{rm P}/(dN_{rm C}dOmega)(E^{rm Prod}_{rm kin} > 83 {rm ~MeV}, theta=90degree)= (2.69pm 0.08_{rm stat} pm 0.12_{rm sys})times 10^{-4} sr^{-1}$.
Precise measurements of semileptonic kaon decay rates at KLOE provide the measurement of the CKM mixing matrix element vus and information about lepton universality. Leptonic kaon decays provide an independent measurement of $abs{vus}^2/abs{vud}^2$,
through the ratio $Gamma(Ktomu u)/Gamma(pitomu u)$. These measurements, together with the result of $|vud|$ from nuclear $beta$ transitions, provide the most precise test of CKM unitarity, allowing the universality of lepton and quark weak couplings to be tested. After the completion of the KLOE data taking, the proposal of a new run with an upgraded KLOE detector, KLOE-2, at an upgraded Dafne machine has been accepted by INFN and it is now starting. Present results from KLOE and future perspectives from KLOE-2 are reported.
The status of the R&D on the Cylindrical-GEM (CGEM) detector foreseen as Inner Tracker for KLOE-2, the upgrade of the KLOE experiment at the DAFNE phi-factory, will be presented. The R&D includes several activities: i) the construction and complete c
haracterization of the full-size CGEM prototype, equipped with 650 microns pitch 1-D longitudinal strips; ii) the study of the 2-D readout with XV patterned strips and operation in magnetic field (up to 1.5T), performed with small planar prototypes in a dedicated test at the H4-SPS beam facility; iii) the characterization of the single-mask GEM technology for the realization of large-area GEM foils.
The technical design report of the Inner Tracker for the KLOE-2 experiment is presented
All relevant inputs for the extraction of the CKM matrix element vus from kl, ks and kpm decays have been measured at KLOE. From a global fit using only KLOE results, but ks lifetime, a value of $|vus|fzero = 0.2157 pm 0.0006$ is obtained, where fzer
o is the form factor parametrizing the hadronic matrix element evaluated at zero momentum transfer. Comparison of the values of fVus for $K_{e3}$ and $K_{mu3}$ modes provides a test of lepton universality at 0.8% level of accuracy. The value $vus/vud=0.2323(15)$ has been obtained from the ratio $Gamma(Ktomu u)/Gamma(pitomu u)$ using KLOE measurement of $BR(kpm to mudue)$ and lattice calculation of the ratio of decay constants $f_K/f_{pi}$. These results, together with $vud = 0.97418(26)$, are compatible at 0.6$sigma$ level with CKM matrix unitarity. The universality of lepton and quark weak couplings can be tested and constraints on new physics extensions of the Standard Model can be set using these very precise measurements from kaon decays.
We have measured the absolute branching ratio of the K+ -> pi+ pi0 (gamma) decay, using about 20 million tagged K+ mesons collected with the KLOE detector at DAFNE, the Frascati phi-factory. Signal counts are obtained from the fit of the distribution
of the momentum of the charged decay particle in the kaon rest frame. The result, inclusive of final-state radiation, is BR(K+ -> pi+ pi0 (gamma))=0.2065+/-0.0005_{stat}+/- 0.0008_{syst}.
