• Started on: 2005-11-01
• Field area: High Energy Physics
• Cientific coordenator: Paulo Fonte
• funding:
• url: http://www-hades.gsi.de/

A experiência HADES, no instituto alemão GSI, destina-se a investigar as propriedades dos mesões leves no seio da matéria nuclear. Esta investigação ajudará a esclarecer a origem física da maior parte da massa existente na matéria vulgar.

A participação do LIP nesta investigação, em associação com a Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão de Leiria, consiste no projecto, teste, construção, instalação e exploração de um detector para identificação de partículas por tempo-de-voo.

A completely instrumented full-size prototype sector was built and beam-tested with satisfactory performance. Production of the six final sectors was initiated.

A detailed simulation of the RPC tof wall response within the HADES detector is progressing. After integration of a realistic geometry into the HADES Geant 3 framework (delayed by several technical difficulties related to a full update of the GSI software environment), the problem of the sensitivity of the final spectrometer to the K- flow is under investigation. The effect of the non-isotropic RPC cell occupancy with respect to the reaction plane (typical of heavy-ion collisions) needs to be quantified, especially because a double coincidence from the two wall layers is required to safely identify kaons up to the mid-rapidity region of the phase space. Such a study of possible systematic effects limiting the sensitivity to K- flow may serve as a basis for a future beam request. In particular, the minimum required beam statistics could be estimated. It is hoped that this work will be ready for a publication in the RCP2007 proceedings.

Publications

The HADES RPC TOF wall will be produced and installation initiated.

A project concerning the involvement of the group in the physics program (beamtimes, physics studies), not covered by the construction grants, will be submitted to FCT’s call of “Projects in collaboration with CERN”.