Direct Evidence for theS*Meson Near theKK¯Threshold

We report observation of the $S^{*}$ meson in the reaction ${\pi }^{-}+p\to S^{*}+n$. The $S^{*}$ decays into $\pi \pi$ and $\mathrm{KK}$ and is seen most clearly in the $2{\pi }^0$ channel. A fit to the data gives a sheet-II pole at $987\pm 7-i(24\pm 7)$ MeV and a relative coupling $\frac{g_{S\to \mathrm{KK}}}{g_{S\to \pi \pi }}$ of 3.8 ± 1.0.