RARE KAON DECAYS

Abstract
Major advances spanning several orders of magnitude in sensitivity are anticipated in the current round of experiments dealing with rare kaon decays. Observations of allowed processes, like and , shed light on detailed aspects of the standard model. New sources of T or CP violation could be manifested by measurements of muon polarization in K → πμνμ and decays and by studies of reactions like . Evidence for new particles and new interactions could appear in advanced efforts to observe K → πxx′ and K → πx decays, where x and x′ represent hypothetical neutral particles, and in searches for lepton flavor violating processes and K+ → π+μe. The experiments are reviewed and their theoretical context is discussed.