The PANDA Barrel DIRC

TL;DR

The PANDA Barrel DIRC is a particle identification detector designed for the PANDA experiment, utilizing innovative optical and photon detection technologies to achieve high separation power for pions and kaons in a challenging momentum range.

Contribution

This paper presents the technical design and validation of the PANDA Barrel DIRC, incorporating improvements over previous DIRC detectors for enhanced performance.

Findings

Successful design validation with a prototype in hadronic beams

Achieved separation power of at least 3 standard deviations for specified momenta

Innovative focusing and photon detection technologies optimized for PANDA

Abstract

The PANDA experiment at the international accelerator Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe (FAIR) near GSI, Darmstadt, Germany will address fundamental questions of hadron physics. Excellent Particle Identification (PID) over a large range of solid angles and particle momenta will be essential to meet the objectives of the rich physics program. Charged PID for the barrel region of the PANDA target spectrometer will be provided by a DIRC (Detection of Internally Reflected Cherenkov light) detector. The Barrel DIRC will cover the polar angle range of 22$^\circ$-140$^\circ$ and cleanly separate charged pions from kaons for momenta between 0.5 GeV/c and 3.5 GeV/c with a separation power of at least 3 standard deviations. The design is based on the successful BABAR DIRC and the SuperB FDIRC R&D with several important improvements to optimize the performance for PANDA, such as a focusing lens system, fast timing, a compact fused silica prism as expansion region, and lifetime-enhanced Microchannel-Plate PMTs for photon detection. This article describes the technical design of the PANDA Barrel DIRC and the result of the design validation using a "vertical slice" prototype in hadronic particle beams at the CERN PS.