Charm in heavy ion collision

About this project

<p>The primary objective of the project is to measure charm hadron production (mainly D mesons) in central Pb+Pb collisions with the upgraded NA61/SHINE detector at the CERN SPS. These will be the first direct measurements of charm production in heavy ion collisions in the CERN SPS energy domain. The objective can be achieved only by the upgrade of the read-out electronics of the Time Projection Chambers (TPC) of the NA61/SHINE experiment at the CERN SPS which will allow recording Pb+Pb collisions at a much larger interaction rate. This upgrade performed within the project is part of the NA61/SHINE detector upgrade programme to be conducted during the CERN accelerator Long Shutdown 2 period (2020 and 2021). The upgrades will be commissioned and tested in 2021 and are necessary to perform new measurements which will start at the end of 2021 and continue at least until 2024. The secondary objective of the project is to understand the charm production phenomenology, facilitated by the measurements proposed here and complemented by those at the higher RHIC and LHC energies, which will allow the disentangling of the hot and cold medium effects acting on the J/y production in an energy domain where the transition to a deconfined state of nuclear matter is expected. The project duration is 36 months from mid-2020 to mid-2023. The first part of the project is devoted for upgrade of the TPC, later the data taking campaign, calibration and data analysis will be carried out. The complexity of the physical goals of the project as well as upgrade of TPC and operational costs of the hardware and software systems require a collaboration of many institutions. The research group consists of 12 institutions: three Norwegian and nine Polish institutions. All these institutions have extensive and many years of experience in the field of nuclear physics and elementary particles. The number of research groups involved demonstrates the size of the project and its importance.</p>

Bilateral cooperation results

The large team consisted of 35 Polish members and 6 Norwegian participants, whose contribution to this project was meaningful and documented by publications.

Project partners

• University of Oslo Donor project partner· Norway
• University of Bergen Donor project partner· Norway
• Western Norway University of Applied Sciences Donor project partner· Norway
• Jagiellonian University Project partner· Poland
• Warsaw University of Technology Project partner· Poland
• Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce Project partner· Poland
• University of Wrocław Project partner· Poland
• University of Warsaw Project partner· Poland
• National Centre for Nuclear Research Project partner· Poland
• The Henryk Niewodniczański Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences Project partner· Poland
• AGH University of Science and Technology Project partner· Poland