Measuring dilepton and heavy quark production at large $\mu_{\rm B}$: the NA60+ experiment at the CERN SPS

TL;DR

The NA60+ experiment at CERN SPS aims to explore the high baryon chemical potential region of the QCD phase diagram by measuring dilepton and heavy quark production, providing insights into phase transition and critical point phenomena.

Contribution

It proposes a new fixed-target experiment, NA60+, designed to measure rare probes like dileptons and heavy quarks in the 5-17 GeV energy range, filling a gap in current research capabilities.

Findings

Design of the NA60+ detector setup and measurement strategy

Projected data collection starting around 2029

Potential to identify phase transition signatures in high-$m$ region

Abstract

The high-$\mu_{\rm B}$ region of the QCD phase diagram has become the object of several studies, focused on the investigation of the order of the phase transition and the search for the critical point. Accessing rare probes is experimentally challenging as it requires large integrated luminosities, and a fixed-target environment represents an ideal solution for these studies. The CERN SPS covers, with large beam intensity, the collision energy region $5<\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}<17$ GeV. A future experiment, NA60+, is being proposed to access this region and perform accurate measurements of the dimuon spectrum from threshold up to the charmonium mass region, and of hadronic decays of charm and strange hadrons. The experiment, which is also part of the Physics Beyond Colliders CERN initiative, aims at taking its first data with Pb and proton beams around 2029.