Type of Document Dissertation Author Baratt, Arie Author's Email Address arbst27@pitt.edu URN etd-05072004-104653 Title Branching Ratios of the Charged Kaon Decays and Radiative Corrections for the Ke3 Decay Mode Degree Doctor of Philosophy Program Physics School Faculty of Arts and Sciences Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title Julia A. Thompson Committee Chair Eric S. Swanson Committee Member Raymond S. Willey Committee Member Steven P. Levitan Committee Member Vladimir P. Savinov Committee Member Keywords
- charged kaon
- CKM matrix
- CMD-2
- VEPP-2M
- branching ratio
- semileptonic decay
- radiative corrections
- Phi factory
- elementary particles
- high energy
Date of Defense 2004-02-24 Availability unrestricted Abstract The CMD--2 experiment at the VEPP-2M accelerator at the Budker Institute ofNuclear Physics has collected $approx$ 1 million charged kaon decays,
from which we extract a clean sample of $approx 74,000 K^+ $ decays,
with $approx$ 50,000 $kmunu$, 18,000 $kpipi$, 4000 ($kmu3 + ke3$),
and 2000 ($k3pc + 3pi0$) events.
Based on these samples we present measurement of
$ R_{2body} equiv Br(kpipi)/Br(kmunu) =
0.3292 pm 0.0048 mbox{stat} pm 0.011 mbox{sys}$,
$R_{semilep} equiv (Br(kmu3) + Br(ke3))/Br(kpipi) =
0.477 pm 0.016 mbox{stat} pm 0.10 mbox{sys}$,
and
$R_{3pion} equiv (Br(k3pc)+Br(3pi0))/Br(kpipi) =
0.315 pm 0.014 mbox{stat} pm 0.054 mbox{sys}$.
The ratio of the two semileptonic decays is extracted from the $K^-$
decays only and yields
$R_{emu} equiv Br(K o pi^0 e
u)/Br(K o pi^0 mu
u) =
1.97 pm 0.09 mbox{stat} pm 0.81 mbox{sys}$.
The strength of these
measurements is the presence of all the major decay modes and
systematics different from some other experiments.
In this dissertation I also consider the radiative corrections
for the $K_{e3}$ decay. This decay is of particular importance since it
provides the best way to extract the value of the $V_{us}$ element of
the CKM matrix. In turn, precise knowledge of $V_{us}$ is needed to resolve
a long standing problem with a unitarity test of the CKM matrix.
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