Kaon experiments at CERN: recent results and prospects

Abstract

The NA48/2 and NA62-$R_K$ experiments at the CERN SPS collected large samples of charged kaon decays in flight in 2003--07. The data analysis is still on-going (with over 20 publications produced so far); the recent results from these experiments are presented. A new upper limit on the rate of a lepton number violating decay $K^\pm\toπ^\mpμ^\pmμ^\pm$ is reported: $\mathcal{B} < 8.6\times 10^{-11}$ at 90\% CL. Searches for heavy sterile neutrino $N_4$ and neutral scalar resonances ($χ$) in $K^\pm\toπμμ$ decays are reported. Upper limits on the products $\mathcal{B}(K^\pm\toμ^\pm N_4)\mathcal{B}(N_4\toπ^\mpμ^\pm)$ and $\mathcal{B}(K^\pm\toπ^\pm χ)\mathcal{B}(χ\toμ^+μ^-)$ are set in the range $10^{-10}$ to $10^{-9}$ for resonance lifetimes up to 100~ps. A preliminary measurement of the electromagnetic transition form factor slope of the $π^0$ from $1.05\times 10^6$ fully reconstructed $π^0\toγe^+e^-$ decays is presented: the obtained result $a = (3.70 \pm 0.53_\text{stat} \pm 0.36_\text{syst})\times 10^{-2}$ represents the first observation of a non-zero slope in the time-like region of momentum transfer.