First measurement of direct CP violation with the NA48 detector at CERN

A new advance on direct CP violation in the neutral kaon system has been made by the NA48 collaboration at CERN. We report on the measurement of the parameter $\Re(\epsilon'/\epsilon)$ based on the data collected in 1997. The experiment is performed by studying all four relevant decay modes of $K_{L}/K_{S} \to \pi^{+}\pi^{-}$ and $\pi^{0}\pi^{0}$ collected simultaneously in the NA48 detector. We have obtained the value $\Re(\epsilon'/\epsilon) = [18.5 \pm 4.5_{(stat)} \pm 5.8_{(syst)}] \times 10^{-4}$.