Development of a prototype for the novel disc DIRC for PANDA

Cowie, Euan Niall (2013) Development of a prototype for the novel disc DIRC for PANDA. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

The PANDA experiment is a planned experiment for the FAIR upgrade to GSI in Darmstadt, Germany. It aims to probe the nature of hadronic matter and the Strong nuclear force to unprecedented levels of accuracy and precision. A general purpose detector, covering 4-Pi solid angle, will reside on the High Energy Storage Ring (HESR) racetrack-type accelerator. The HESR will provide a beam of variable momentum anti-Protons which impinge upon a proton target internal to the PANDA detector.

To fulfil the physics programme the detector will utilise two Cherenkov detectors based on the Detection of Internally Reflection Cherenkov radiation (DIRC) principle, one in a barrel configuration and one in an disc configuration. A proposed design for the disc configuration DIRC is the Focussing Lightguide Disc DIRC(FLDD). In addition to the novel geometry the FLDD proposes to use a unique hardware element to correct for the chromatic dispersion present in DIRC detectors. Lithium Fluoride was selected to correct for this dispersion and was found to reduce the angular spread resulting by a factor of ~4.7, in agreement with the
predicted reduction.

A full optical simulation of a prototype accurately reproduced all of the features observed at test beam.
Therefore to perform the Pion/Kaon separation required for the PANDA physics programme the design needs a detector surface split into 64 channels or a resolution of 0.78125mm per pixel. Further study of the focussing lightguide element is required to access the full performance of the FLDD
design.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Physics, DIRC, Cherenkov, detector, particle, nuclear, PANDA, optics, dispersion
• Subjects: Q Science > QC Physics
• Colleges/Schools: College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy
• Supervisor's Name: Seitz, Dr. Bjoern and Hoek, Dr. Matthias
• Date of Award: 2013
• Depositing User: Mr Euan N Cowie
• Unique ID: glathesis:2013-4334
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 30 May 2013 11:31
• Last Modified: 30 May 2013 11:31
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/4334