The DIRC detectors at the PANDA experiment

Abstract

PANDA is an experiment at the new FAIR facility at GSI and will, among other physics goals, perform charmonium spectroscopy and search for gluonic excitations using high luminosity antiproton beams up to 15 GeV/c. A high performance particle identification system applying DIRC detectors will allow pion/kaon separation up to 4 GeV/c. A Barrel DIRC with fused silica radiator bars or plates will surround the target at a radial distance of 48 cm and will cover a polar angle range of 22 to 140 degrees; a novel Endcap Disk DIRC built of a segmented fused silica disk of 210 cm diameter will be installed in the forward region to cover the polar angles from 5 to 22 degrees. The design of the optics and the readout of both DIRCs will be presented in this paper. Different prototypes were tested in particle beams. The performance of the latest prototypes, which are close to the final DIRC design, are discussed and compared to the PANDA requirements.