Novel physics opportunities at the HESR-Collider with PANDA at FAIR

TL;DR

This paper discusses the new scientific opportunities at the HESR-C collider with the PANDA detector at FAIR, focusing on exploring QCD phenomena with high luminosity and energy in antiproton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions.

Contribution

It introduces the potential of the HESR-C collider mode at FAIR for advancing QCD research with novel experimental capabilities.

Findings

Potential to study excited open charm and bottom states

Ability to investigate nuclear bound states with heavy quarks

Exploration of gluon-dominated strong interactions

Abstract

Exciting new scientific opportunities are presented for the PANDA detector at the High Energy Storage Ring in the redefined $\bar{\text{p}} \text{p}(A)$ collider mode, HESR-C, at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) in Europe. The high luminosity, $L \sim 10^{31}$ cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$, and a wide range of intermediate and high energies, $\sqrt{s_{\text{NN}}}$ up to 30 GeV for $\bar{\text{p}} \text{p}(A)$ collisions will allow to explore a wide range of exciting topics in QCD, including the study of the production of excited open charm and bottom states, nuclear bound states containing heavy (anti)quarks, the interplay of hard and soft physics in the dilepton production, and the exploration of the regime where gluons -- but not quarks -- experience strong interaction.