Conceptual Design of Beryllium Target for the KLF Project

Abstract

The Kaon Production Target (KPT) is an important component of the proposed K-Long facility which will be operated in JLab Hall~D, targeting strange baryon and meson spectroscopy. In this note we present a conceptual design for the Be-target assembly for the planned K-Long beam line, which will be used along with the GlueX spectrometer in its standard configuration for the proposed experiments. The high quality 12-GeV CEBAF electron beam enables production of a K$_L$ flux at the GlueX target on the order of $1\times 10^4 K_L/sec$, which exceeds the K$_L$ flux previously attained at SLAC by three orders of magnitude. An intense K$_L$ beam would open a new window of opportunity not only to locate "missing resonances" in the strange hadron spectrum, but also to establish their properties by studying different decay channels systematically. The most important and radiation damaging background in K$_L$ production is due to neutrons. The Monte Carlo simulations for the proposed conceptual design of KPT show that the resulting neutron and gamma flux lead to a prompt radiation dose rate for the KLF experiment that is below the JLab Radiation Control Department radiation dose rate limits in the experimental hall and at the site boundary, and will not substantially affect the performance of the spectrometer.