Kaon - Aetherwisp

A kaon is a strange meson that comes in two types, charged kaons and neutral kaons.

Charged kaons are written $K^{+}$ and are made of an up quark and an anti-strange quark ( $u\bar{s}$ ) with antiparticle $K^{-}$ .
Neutral kaons are written $K^{0}$ and are made of a down quark and an anti-strange quark ( $d\bar{s}$ ), with antiparticle $\bar{K}^{0}$ (though it's more complicated than this; see > Neutral kaon mixing below).

All kaons decay via the weak interaction. The most common decays are in two or three pions

K^{0,\pm} \rightarrow 2\pi / 3\pi

(pion types depend on the charge being conserved) and, for charged kaons, in a muon plus muonic neutrino

K^{+}\to \mu^{+}+\bar{\nu}_{\mu},\quad K^{-}\to \mu^{-}+\nu_{\mu}

They are often produced in collisions between pions and protons:

\pi^{-} + p \rightarrow K^{0}+\Lambda \quad, \quad \pi^{+}+p \rightarrow K^{0}+K^{-}+p