PANDA experiment - strong interaction studies with antiprotons

PANDA experiment at the high energy antiproton storage ring HESR is dedicated to detailed studies of the structure and interactions of strongly interacting particles, hadrons. The main physics topics of the experiment are:

  • hadron spectroscopy, in particular the search for exotic states build out of charm quarks (so called charmonia) and searches for particles consisting of gluons alone (so called “glueballs”),

  • investigation of properties of mesons embedded in nuclear medium,

  • spectroscopy of double-hypernuclei and study of the nucleon structure.

 

The PANDA detector is designed for the complete detection and identification of particles produced in the interaction of the antiproton beam with hydrogen or nuclear targets. To ensure a geometrical acceptance close to 4 in the chosen fixed target arrangement, the detection system consists of two spectrometers: the Target Spectrometer based on a solenoid magnet surrounding the interaction point and the Forward Spectrometer using a large gap dipole magnet for momentum analysis of particles emitted at the most forward angles.

 

Longitudinal section of the PANDA setup with the Target Spectrometer on the left side, and the Forward Spectrometer starting with the dipole magnet on the right. The antiproton beam enters from the left.

 

Members of the PANDA collaboration from the Cluster of Nuclear Physics Departments are responsible for the construction of planar straw tube detectors for the PANDA Forward Spectrometer. The construction is financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education from in-kind contribution to FAIR. The detectors have to register trajectories of charged particles with a high spatial resolution of 0.1 mm at very high rates up to 50 million/sec. The ongoing work also includes preparation of the detector readout electronics as well as development of online data selection and analysis algorithms, e.g. the track finding algorithm, running on heterogeneous computing platforms.

 

Prototype double layer of straw tube detectors for the PANDA Forward Spectrometer built in the Department of Hadron Physics IF UJ.

 

The physics program of PANDA and the design of the straw tube detectors are presented in the following two publications:

 

Contact: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Smyrski