Interactions of Kaons, Other Hadrons, and Electrons

威廉和玛丽小组与来自加州大学欧文分校、犹他大学、斯坦福大学和里士满大学的合作者合作，计划继续以高灵敏度搜索长寿命中性K介子的罕见双轻子衰变的项目。其中包括轻子-非守恒衰变为介子和电子，以及改变味道的中性电流衰变为介子-反介子对和电子-正电子对。这项工作，实验E871，是在布鲁克海文国家实验室的AGS设施进行的。根据现有数据，单事件灵敏度在万亿分之一到二分之一的水平上的目标似乎是可以实现的。目前正在进行的一项广泛分析揭示了对双电子事件的首次观察。利用E871探测器，UCIrvine， Richmond U和William and Mary也进行了E935实验，试图探测低质量胶子的证据。具体地说，研究了一个长寿命的胶子-胶子强子衰变为一对带电的介子和一个光子。然后，极限可以放在超对称粒子理论的低质量量规情景上。在过去的五年中，有三位威廉和玛丽学院的研究生在这项工作的基础上撰写了他们的博士论文。此外，该项目还产生了7篇本科高级荣誉研究论文。威廉玛丽集团在本科和研究生阶段的教育承诺将在未来继续下去。＊＊＊

***9803848EckhauseThe William and Mary group, in conjunction with collaborators from UCIrvine, UTAustin, Stanford U, and Richmond U, plans to continue its program of searching at high sensitivity for the rare dilepton decays of the long-lived neutral K meson. These include the lepton-nonconserving decay to a muon and an electron, and the flavor-changing neutral current decays to a muon-antimuon pair and to an electron-positron pair. This work, Experiment E871, is carried out at the AGS Facility of the Brookhaven National Laboratory. The objective of single-event sensitivity at a level of one-to-two parts in a thousand billion appears within reach based upon available data. An extensive analysis now in progress has revealed the first observation of di-electron events. Using the E871 detector a separate experiment E935 has also been run by UCIrvine, Richmond U, and William and Mary which attempts to probe for evidence of a low mass gluon. Specifically a search is made for the decay of a long-lived gluon-gluino hadron to a pair of charged pions and a photino. Limits can then be placed on a low mass gaugino scenario of supersymmetric particle theory. Within the past five years three William and Mary graduate students have written their Ph.D. dissertations based on this work. In addition this program has led to seven undergraduate senior honors research theses. This commitment to education by the William and Mary group at both the undergraduate and graduate levels will continue in the future. ***