Status and plans of the NA61/SHINE physics program

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ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS Experiment

Status and Plans of the NA61/SHINE Physics Program* T. Czopowicz** (for the NA61/SHINE Collaboration) Faculty of Physics, Warsaw University of Technology, Poland Received March 31, 2011

Abstract—One of the NA61/SHINE experiment’s goals is to discover the critical point of strongly interacting matter and study the properties of the onset of deconfinement. This is to be achieved by performing a two-dimensional phase diagram (T −μB ) scan—measuring hadron production in collisions of various beam particles and targets at various beam energies. NA61/SHINE also collects data for the T2K experiment, which are just about to be published. DOI: 10.1134/S1063778812060105

1. THE NA61/SHINE PHYSICS GOALS NA61/SHINE (SPS Heavy Ion and Neutrino Experiment) [1, 2] is a fixed-target experiment located in the North Area of the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator facility at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. It is the successor of the NA49 experiment [3], which was operating in 1994–2002. The NA61 collaboration consists of 130 physicists from 24 institutes in 13 countries. NA61/SHINE physics goals are: (i) search for the critical point of strongly interacting matter, (ii) detailed study of the onset of deconfinement, (iii) study of high-pT hadrons in pp and pPb interactions, (iv) reference measurements for neutrino physics (T2K experiment) by measuring the hadron production of the T2K target exposed to the proton beam at 31 GeV/c [4, 5], (v) reference measurements for cosmic-ray physics (KASCADE-Grande and Pierre Auger Observatory experiments) by measuring pC, πC interactions [6, 7]. In order to search for the critical point and study the properties of the onset of deconfinement, NA61/SHINE will perform a two-dimensional phase diagram scan. It will measure hadron production in various collisions (pp, pPb, BC, ArCa, XeLa) at various beam energies (13, 20, 30, 40, 80, and 158 A GeV) [8]. This new data, together with PbPb ∗ **

reactions recorded by NA49, will allow to cover the region, where the critical point is expected (Fig. 1). According to lattice calculations T = 162 ± 2 MeV and μB = 360 ± 40 MeV [9]. NA61/SHINE will search for the onset of “kink, horn, step” [10] signatures in light nuclei and a maximum of fluctuation signals for systems freezing-out close to the critical point. 2. DETECTOR OVERVIEW The NA61/SHINE detector is a large acceptance hadron spectrometer. The main components of the current detector were constructed and successfully used by NA49. The experimental setup is shown in Fig. 2. T, MeV 200 13 A GeV

158 A GeV

180 160

NA61 future data

pp

NA61 collected data

CC SiSi

2009/2010

PbPb pp

140

NA49 Top SPS

120 100

200

Low SPS

300

400

500

BC ArCa XeLa

600 μB, MeV

Fig. 1. Freeze-out points of the planned NA61/SHINE two-dimensional phase-diagram scan.

The text was submitted by the author in English. E-mail: [email protected]

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~13 m MTPC-L ToF-L

Vertex magnets ToF-F VTPC-