Studies of low-energy K^- nuclear interactions by AMADEUS

¹ INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, Frascati, Rome, Italy
² Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy
³ Politecnico di Milano, Dip. di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria, Milano, Italy
⁴ Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering, Magurele, Romania
⁵ University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
⁶ INFN Sezione di Milano, Milano, Italy
⁷ Stefan-Meyer-Institut für Subatomare Physik, Wien, Austria
⁸ Excellence Cluster ‘Origin and Structure of the Universe’, Garching, Germany
⁹ Physik Department E12, Technische Universität München, Garching, Germany
¹⁰ INFN Sezione di Roma I, Rome, Italy
¹¹ Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy
¹² The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
¹³ RIKEN, The Institute of Physics and Chemical Research, Saitama, Japan
¹⁴ Institute of Physics, Jagiellonian University, Kracow, Poland
¹⁵ Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche Enrico Fermi, Rome, Italy
¹⁶ National Centre for Nuclear Research, Warsaw, Poland

^a e-mail: raffaele.delgrande@lnf.infn.it

Published online: 3 August 2018

Abstract

The goal of the AMADEUS experiment is to shed light on unsolved fundamental issues in the non-perturbative strangeness QCD sector through the study of lowenergy K^- hadronic interactions with light nuclear targets. The main open questions are the controversial nature of the Δ(1405) state, which is investigated in hyperon-pion correlation studies, and the possible existence of exotic antikaon multi-nucleon clusters, whose search in K^- induced reactions is intimately related to the studies of the K^- multi-nucleon absorption processes in hyperon-nucleon/nucleus channels. The DAΦNE collider at the INFN-LNF provides unique monochromatic low-momentum kaons from the φ meson decay almost at-rest, suitable for the AMADEUS studies. The KLOE detector is exploited as an active target, in order to obtain excellent acceptance and resolution data for K^- nuclear capture on H, ⁴He, ⁹Be and ¹²C, both at-rest and in-flight.