Design studies for a second generation Dilepton Spectrometer to be built at the SIS accelerator of GSI are presented. The basic design parameters of this system are specified and the different detector components for charged particle tracking and for lepton identification are described. The geometrical acceptance for lepton pairs is given. Results on single track momentum resolution and on lepton pair mass resolution are reported.
HADES is a versatile magnetic spectrometer aimed at studying dielectron production in pion, proton and heavy-ion induced collisions. Its main features include a ring imaging gas Cherenkov detector for electron-hadron discrimination, a tracking system consisting of a set of 6 superconducting coils producing a toroidal field and drift chambers and a multiplicity and electron trigger array for additional electron-hadron discrimination and event characterization. A two-stage trigger system enhances events containing electrons. The physics program is focused on the investigation of hadron properties in nuclei and in the hot and dense hadronic matter. The detector system is characterized by an 85% azimuthal coverage over a polar angle interval from 18 to 85 degree, a single electron efficiency of 50% and a vector meson mass resolution of 2.5%. Identification of pions, kaons and protons is achieved combining time-of-flight and energy loss measurements over a large momentum range. This paper describes the main features and the performance of the detector system.
The TRB hardware module is a multi-purpose Trigger and Readout Board with on-board DAQ functionality developed for the upgrade of the HADES experiment. It contains a single computer chip (Etrax) running Linux as a well as a 100 Mbit/s Ethernet interface. It has been orginally designed to work as a 128-channel Time to Digital Converter based on the HPTDC chip from CERN. The new version contains a 2 Gbit/s optical link and an interface connector (15 Gbit/s) in order to realize an add-on card concept which makes the hardware very flexible. Moreover, an FPGA chip (Xilinx, Virtex 4 LX 40) and a TigerSharc DSP provide new computing resources which can be used to run on-line analysis algorithms. The TRB is proposed as a prototype for new modules for the planned detector systems PANDA and CBM at the future FAIR facility at GSI-Darmstadt.
Inclusive production of e+e--pairs in pp and dp collisions at a kinetic beam energy of 1.25 GeV/u has been studied with the HADES spectrometer. In the latter case, the main goal was to obtain data on pair emission in quasi-free np collisions. To select this particular reaction channel the HADES experimental setup was extended with a Forward Wall hodoscope, which allowed to register spectator protons. Here, the measured invariant mass distributions demonstrate a strong enhancement of the pair yield for M > 140 MeV/c2 in comparison to pp data.
Results of the HADES measurement of inclusive dielectron production in Ar+KCl collisions at a kinetic beam energy of 1.76 AGeV are presented. For the first time, high mass resolution spectroscopy was performed. The invariant mass spectrum of dielectrons is compared with predictions of UrQMD and HSD transport codes.