Facilities and Methods: Rare Kaon Decays: Investigations into the Heart of Matter1

Abstract

In recent decades there has been phenomenal success in discovering laws and symmetry principles which govern ordinary matter at its most fundamental level. These triumphs have unraveled the behavior of matter at the smallest scales, have had immense consequences in our understanding of the history of the universe, and have led to the development of the basic mathematical models needed for such understanding. Recent discoveries concerning the apparent existence of other more dominant forms of matter and energy, “dark matter” and “dark energy”, however, open the possibilities that we are on the threshold of discovery of a new era in understanding of the basic components of the universe.