Compressed baryonic matter experiment at FAIR

GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, Darmstadt, Germany

^a e-mail: j.eschke@gsi.de

Abstract

The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment is being planned at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (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 modifcations 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/Fm, the CBM detector will record both proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at beam energies up to 45 AGeV. Hadronic, leptonic and photonic observables will be measured in a large acceptance. The nuclear interaction rates will reach up to 10 MHz to measure extremely rare probes like charm near threshold. This requires the development of novel detector systems, trigger and data acquisition concepts as well as in- novative real-time reconstruction techniques. A key observable of the physics program is a precise measurement of lowmass vector mesons and charmonium in their leptonic decay channel. In CBM, electrons will be identified using a gaseous RICH detector combined with several TRD detectors positioned after a system of silicon tracking stations which are located inside a magnetic dipole field. The concept of the RICH detector, results on R & D as well as feasibility studies and invariant mass distributions of charmonium will be discussed.