First results from subthreshold K+-production measurements with ANKE Original Research Article

The new spectrometer ANKE has been put into operation at the accelerator COSY of the Forschungszentrum Jülich. An initial scientific goal is to study K+-production in pA collisions at subthreshold energies below the free NN-threshold of T = 1.58 GeV. First measurements of double differential cross sections in p12C collisions at emission angles around 0° have been performed at T = 1.0, 1.2 and 2.0 GeV. The challenge is to identify the kaons in a huge background of pions and protons, since the signal to background ratio decreases to about 10−6 at T = 1.0 GeV. For background suppression detectors and a trigger system based on energy-loss and time-of-flight measurements have been developed. In the analysis the decay of kaons (τ = 12.4 ns) stopped in the detection system into μ+ and π+ is exploited as well as the track information from the wire chambers.