NA62 is a fixed beam experiment at the CERN SPS accelerator.
Its main goal is the measurement of the decay K+ -> π+ ν ν, an "ultra rare" decay with an estimated branching ratio of 9 10-11 according to the standard model. To accomplish the measurement the experiment needs to collect about 1014 K+ decays and to reconstruct the decay cinematic.
INFN Ferrara participated in the project and construction of the readout electronic of the silicon time-resolving pixel beam spectrometer, the GigaTracker. The three stations of the GigaTracker have to track particles in a beam with a flux reaching 1.3MHz/mm2, measuring momentum, direction, spatial and time coordinates of the charged beam particles with a single-hit timing resolution of 150ps RMS for a total material budget of less than 0.5 % X0 per station.
During the CERN long shutdown 2 (2019-2020) the GTK has been improved, increasing the number of stations from three to four, for a better cinematic reconstruction.
Team leader: Alberto Gianoli
Link: https://na62.web.cern.ch