Workshop
"Opportunities from FAIR to other low energy facilities"
28-29 July
The conference will host a workshop focusing on different physics topics pursued at the FAIR facility. In addition, opportunities at other low energy facilities, such as NICA, SPS, RHIC an fixed target experiments at LHC will be discussed.
FAIR - The new Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe
FAIR is a new, unique international accelerator facility for the research with antiprotons and ions. It is ready to be built within the coming years in Darmstadt, Germany. The major part of the budget will be provided by the Federal Republic of Germany, together with the German State of Hesse. Other fractions will be fundedby international partners from Europe and overseas.
The core of FAIR, a double-ring accelerator (SIS100/SIS300 heavy ion synchrotron) with a circumference of 1100 meters, will be associated with a complex system of cooler and storage rings and experimental setups. The synchrotron will deliver ion beams of unprecedent intensities and energies. Thus also intensive secondary beams can be produced, providing antiprotons and exotic nuclei.
FAIR will be built near the premises of the renowned physical research institute GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH. The GSI facility will serve as pre-accelerator and injector for the new complex.
The new FAIR facility, where various physics programs can be operated in parallel, will offer outstanding research opportunities and discovery potential for about 3000 scientists from about 50 countries.
FAIR allows to carry out several physics programs in parallel, covering four major fields:
NUSTAR: Nuclear Structure, Astrophysics and Reactions
FAIR will create secondary beams of highly unstable nuclei for probing nuclear structure and the origin of the elements in the Universe. FAIR will deliver beams of all kinds of isotopes down to the shortest-lived, in high purity, with a wide range of energies, and in timed pulses tailored for experiments. For the first time, the heaviest unstable nuclei will be produced in large enough quantities for precision studies. They are then directed to three experimental areas: The high-energy branch where reactions of high-energy heavy nuclei relevant to astrophysical processes will be investigated; The low-energy branch where properties of nuclei such as decay modes and energy levels can be explored using low-energy beams; The ring branch where exotic nuclei are collected, cooled and stored in the FAIR ring system (CR-RESR-NESR). There, experiments will measure the masses and lifetimes of unknown nuclei or probe their structure using an electron or antiproton beam.
CBM: Compressed Baryonic Matter
High-energy collisions between heavy nuclei will be carried out at FAIR to investigate how nuclear matter behaves over a range of high pressures typically found in supernova explosions and neutron stars. At very high densities, we expect the constituents of atomic nuclei, the protons and neutrons, to ‘melt’ into a quark-gluon plasma. This phase transition to such a new state shall be observable in violent collisions between nuclei at energies provided by the FAIR accelerators. A universal detection system will identify the particles that are created in the dense reaction zone, for example, particles containing strange and charm quarks which serve as sensitive diagnostic probes. The experiments at FAIR will complement studies of the more primordial hot quark-gluon plasma state being carried out with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva.
PANDA: AntiProton ANnihilation at DArmstadt
Antiproton beams of unprecedented intensity and quality will be produced at FAIR. They are made by bombarding a target with protons, cooled in the two cooler rings (CR and RESR) and then stored in the High Energy Storage Ring (HESR). There, they interact with a proton target (hydrogen) to produce a variety of composite particles containing strange and charm quarks. In particular, one particle consisting of a charm quark and antiquark – charmonium – will probe aspects of the strong force not investigated before. The interaction region is enclosed by the multipurpose PANDA detector. This is composed of layers of different kinds of detecting devices to track the paths and measure the energies of particles produced by the antiproton-target collisions.
APPA: Physics - Atomic, Plasma Physics and Applications
Matter plasmas may occur in various forms. Hot plasmas at low pressure are already well-known. But still less investigated are plasmas at high pressure and low temeratures as they exist e.g. in the interior of large planets. Plasma physics experiments at FAIR will reveal latest findings in this field. The heavy ions available at FAIR will also be used to investigate the impact of cosmic radiation on inter-planetary flights for both, astronauts and spacecraft components. Ultra-strong electromagnetic fields occur in highly-charged heavy ions and can be further increased in experiments with fast heavy ions passing each other. The new project will open up unique opportunities for research in these areas of ultra-strong field physics testing the quantum-dynamic theory.
More information on www.fair-center.eu
