The Compressed Baryonic Matter Experiment at FAIR

J.M. Heuser^a for the CBM Collaboration

GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research GmbH, Darmstadt, Germany

^a e-mail: J.Heuser@gsi.de

Published online: 19 April 2011

Abstract

The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment is being planned at the international research centre FAIR, under realization next to the GSI laboratory in Darmstadt, Germany. Its physics programme addresses the QCD phase diagram in the region of highest net baryon densities. Of particular interest are the expected first order phase transition from partonic to hadronic matter, ending in a critical point, and modifications of hadron properties in the dense medium as a signal of chiral symmetry restoration. Laid out as a fixed-target experiment at the synchrotrons SIS-100/SIS-300, providing magnetic bending power of 100 and 300 T/m, the CBM detector will record both proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at beam energies up to 45A GeV. Hadronic, leptonic and photonic observables have to be measured with large acceptance. The nuclear interaction rates will reach up to 10 MHz to measure extremely rare probes like charm near threshold. Two versions of the experiment are being studied, optimized for either electron-hadron or muon identification, combined with silicon detector based charged-particle tracking and micro-vertex detection. The research programme will start at SIS-100 with ion beams between 2 and 11A GeV, and protons up to energies of 29 GeV using the HADES detector and an initial configuration of the CBM experiment. The CBM physics requires the development of novel detector systems, trigger and data acquisition concepts as well as innovative real-time reconstruction techniques. Progress with feasibility studies of the experiment and the development of its detector systems are discussed.