The application of charge independence to the nuclear capture of Negative K-mesons

Abstract

The results of the charge independence hypothesis are compared with the existing experimental data on the nuclear capture of negative K-mesons. The comparison of the calculated gS− /gS+ and π−/π+ emission ratios with the experimental ones strongly suggest the dominance of theT= 1 state (1) over theT= 0 state in the primary act. Furthermore, the π−/π+ emission ratio is shown to give an estimate of the branching ratio between gS emission and Λ0 emission, which is free from the ambiguities due to the secondary absorption of the products of the primary act or due to the difficulties of detecting neutral particles and is only slightly affected by secondary charge exchange scatterings of the product particles. The preliminary value thus determined by using the experimental data thus far available for the π−/π+ emission ratio, suggests that gS emission is more favored than Λ0 emission in the primary act. The implications of measuring the positive-to-negative ratio of high energy π-mesons emitted from K− captures is discussed in some detail and a few experiments are proposed in this connection.