We have searched for a deeply bound kaonic state by using the FINUDA spectrometer installed at the e(+)e(-) collider DAPhiNE. Almost monochromatic K(-)'s produced through the decay of phi(1020) mesons are used to observe K(-) absorption reactions stopped on very thin nuclear targets. Taking this unique advantage, we have succeeded to detect a kaon-bound state K(-)pp through its two-body decay into a Lambda hyperon and a proton. The binding energy and the decay width are determined from the invariant-mass distribution as 115(+6)(-5)(stat)(+3)(-4)(syst) MeV and 67(+14)(-11)(stat)(+2)(-3)(syst) MeV, respectively.

The electron-positron collider DAÈNE, the Italian È factory, has been recently upgraded in order to implement an innovative collision scheme based on large crossing angle, small beam sizes at the crossing point, and compensation of beam-beam interaction by means of sextupole pairs creating a ''crab-waist'' configuration in the interaction region. Experimental tests of the novel scheme exhibited an increase by a factor of 3 in the peak luminosity of the collider with respect to the performances reached before the upgrade. In this Letter we present the new collision scheme, discuss its advantages, describe the hardware modifications realized for the upgrade, and report the results of the experimental tests carried out during commissioning of the machine in the new configuration and standard operation for the users. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.174801 PACS numbers: 29.27.Bd, 29.20.db, 29.27.Eg Pushing the luminosity of storage-ring colliders to unprecedented levels opens up unique opportunities for precision measurements of rare decay modes and extremely small cross sections, which are sensitive to new physics beyond the standard model.In high luminosity colliders with conventional collision schemes the key requirements to increase the luminosity are: very small vertical beta function y at the interaction point (IP), high beam intensity and large horizontal emittance " x and beam size x . However, y cannot be much smaller than the longitudinal rms bunch size (bunch length) z without incurring the ''hour-glass'' effect. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to shorten the bunch in a high current ring without exciting collective instabilities. Even then, the large beam current may result in high power losses, beam instabilities and dramatic increase of the wallplug power. These problems can be overcome with the recently proposed crab-waist (CW) scheme of beambeam collisions [1,2] where a substantial luminosity increase can be achieved without bunch length reduction and with moderate beam currents.The CW scheme has been successfully tested at the electron-positron collider DAÈNE, the Italian È factory [3,4] operating at the energy of 1020 MeV in the center of mass. After an upgrade including the implementation of this novel collision scheme, the specific luminosity at low beam currents has been boosted by more than a factor of 4, while the present peak luminosity is a factor of 3 higher than the maximum value obtained with the original configuration based on the standard collision scheme.The successful test has provided the opportunity to continue the DAÈNE physics program. Moreover, the advantages of the crab-waist collision scheme have triggered several collider projects exploiting its potential. In particular, physics and accelerator communities are discussing new projects of a SuperB factory [5,6] and a SuperTau-Charm factory [7] with luminosities about 2 orders of magnitude beyond those achieved at the present B-[8] and Tau-charm factories [9].In this Letter we briefly introduce the CW concept, shortly discuss ...

No abstract

A: Optical readout of large Time Projection Chambers (TPCs) with multiple Gas Electron Multipliers (GEMs) amplification stages has shown to provide very interesting performances for high energy particle tracking. Proposed applications for low-energy and rare event studies, such as Dark Matter search, ask for demanding performance in the keV energy range. The performance of such a readout was studied in details as a function of the electric field configuration and GEM gain by using a 55 Fe source within a 7 litre sensitive volume detector developed as a part of the R&D for the CYGNUS project. Results reported in this paper show that the low noise level of the sensor allows to operate with a 2 keV threshold while keeping a rate of fake-events lesser than 10 per year. In this configuration, a detection efficiency well above 95% along with an energy resolution (σ) of 18% is obtained for the 5.9 keV photons demonstrating the very promising capabilities of this technique.