Site Acceptance Test: Important detector part for FAIR experiment pillar CBM successfully handed over
14.12.2020 |
An important component for the future CBM experiment, one of the four central pillars of the FAIR research program, has successfully performed the Site Acceptance Test (SAT) on the GSI/FAIR campus. On behalf of a team from the Nuclear Physics Institute (NPI) of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) and from the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU), Dr. Petr Chudoba (NPI) handed over the manipulator for PSD detector, an in-kind contribution for FAIR. For CBM, this is the first in-kind contribution of a foreign partner delivered to Germany.
The Czech Republic is a partner state of the FAIR project and joined FAIR as an "Aspirant Partner" in spring 2019. At that time, the partnership could already build on a long-standing and very good working cooperation between Czech research institutions and GSI/FAIR. Czech scientists are involved, for example, in the large detector HADES as well as in nuclear astrophysics and are active in all four FAIR research pillars, including CBM. Here, they are significantly contributing to research, development and construction of the PSD detector (Projectile Spectator Detector), which is part of the experimental setup of CBM.
The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment is one of the key experiments at FAIR and aims to explore the QCD phase diagram in the region of high baryon densities. The focus is on the investigation of highly compressed nuclear matter, as it exists in neutron stars and in the center of supernova explosions, with unprecedented precision and over a very wide density range. The Projectile Spectator Detector (PSD) serves for measuring the geometry of heavy ion collisions at the CBM experiment. The now delivered component, the manipulator, is the movable part of this detector.
PSD will be able to detect particles from the interaction of relativistic heavy ions with a target. Therefore, it will be located at a distance of about 8 to 12 meters from the interaction point around beam pipe. As the beam pipe is movable, also the detector has to be movable in several directions as well as able to rotate in the range of several degrees. The weight of PSD is about 25 tons, so it was a demanding task to design and build a corresponding support frame, the PSD manipulator.
The Czech team successfully achieved this complex requirement. The manipulator of PSD now allows horizontal and vertical movement with the precision of millimeters as well as rotation of the whole PSD detector. After installation, it will be able to support about 25 tons of calorimeter modules. After successful testing, the detector part is stored at GSI/FAIR until installation in the CBM cave. (BP)
