THE SUPERCONDUCTING KAON SPECTROMETER - SKS

A superconducting kaon spectrometer has been installed in the north ex perimental hall of the KEK 12-GeV proton synchrotron. The spectrometer was designed to serve for nuclear physics experiments with meson beam s in the 1 GeV/c region, particular emphasis being laid on study of La mbda-hypernuclei via (pi(+),K+) reactions. In order to obtain h-hypern uclear data with better statistics and energy resolution, it was desig ned to have a good momentum resolution of 0.1% FWHM and a large accept ance of 100 msr. It consists of a large superconducting dipole magnet, tracking chambers, and trigger counters that can efficiently select k aons from large background of pions and protons. The overall energy re solution for scattering is realized together with a beam-line spectrom eter in the K6 beam line, the momentum resolution of which was also de signed to be better than 0.1% FWHM. A good energy resolution of better than 2 MeV FWHM has been confirmed in pi(-)-C-12 elastic scattering a nd in the (pi(+),K+) reaction on C-12.